Following the shocking murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the spotlight has intensified on the deep-rooted problems plaguing the health insurance industry.
Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old from a prominent Maryland family, was arrested and charged with gunning down Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel in a crime that has captivated Americans with its mix of wealth, violence and health care issues.
Mangione, who had wealth and privilege, may have been driven to violence by his own health crises. At the time of his arrest, authorities reportedly discovered a handwritten note on him that strongly criticized the privatized healthcare system.
The note, obtained by The Associated Press, highlights the disparity between the costly U.S. healthcare system and the country's low life expectancy.
"Mangione likely was motivated by his anger at what he called 'parasitic' health insurance companies and a disdain for corporate greed," the AP reported. "He wrote that the U.S. has the most expensive healthcare system in the world and that the profits of major corporations continue to rise while 'our life expectancy' does not."
The U.S. has the lowest life expectancy among large, wealthy countries while it far outspends its peers on healthcare, according to the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation's Health System Tracker, which monitors how well the U.S. health system is operating through key quality and cost measures.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says life expectancy in the U.S. in 2022 was 77.5 years. While that's an increase of 1.1 years from 2021, it's significantly lower than the life expectancy in comparable countries, which is 82.2 years.
At the same time, the U.S. has the highest per person healthcare spending, reaching an estimated $12,555 per capita in 2022, according to Peterson-KFF. The average per capita spending in comparable countries (which include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K.) is $6,651 -- nearly half the amount.
"In 1980, the U.S. and comparable countries had similar life expectancies and health spending, but the trends have diverged in the last few decades," the report noted.
Although Peterson-KFF didn't delve into what might be fueling the change, it did note that both life expectancy and health spending may be influenced by factors outside of the health system, such as income inequality, investments in social services and other socioeconomic factors.
And that sentiment might have been lost on Mangione. Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, told NPR that problems with health care access cause surely suffering, but health care is not the main factor behind poor life expectancy.
"Research shows that about 10-20% of health outcomes are attributable to health care," such as lack of access to insurance and high costs, Woolf said. "But the majority of the reason for poor life expectancy in the United States exists outside of the health care space."
For instance, NPR noted that a "significant" factor behind America's lower life expectancy is gun violence.
According to the CDC, the top 10 causes of death in 2022 were: heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, COVID-19, stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and chronic liver disease/cirrhosis.
In any event, there's no denying that the crime has set off a wave of frustration about the health insurance industry, with many voicing their support for the gunman on social media. Meantime, Mangione is currently being held in Pennsylvania and fighting extradition to New York, where he's been charged with Thompson's murder.