Delay, Deny, Dehumanise

The Corporate Capture of Public Services

The recent tragic death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson has exposed a disturbing phenomenon in public sentiment. Of 62,000 Facebook posts about his death, an overwhelming 57,000 contained laughing or smiling emojis. Perhaps equally telling is the corporate response, with major pharmaceutical companies hastily removing leadership team information from their websites - a defensive reaction that further underscores the growing chasm between healthcare leadership and the public they serve.

The deepening polarisation between social classes has become a defining feature of this crisis. Healthcare CEOs and senior executives increasingly inhabit a separate reality from the general public - their multimillion-dollar compensation packages, private healthcare arrangements, and insulated lifestyles creating not just a financial divide, but a profound experiential one. These executives often live in affluent enclaves, send their children to private schools, and access premium healthcare services - completely removed from the daily healthcare struggles of ordinary Americans. This physical and social isolation means they rarely, if ever, experience the consequences of their policy decisions firsthand.

The economic chasm is particularly stark. While executives receive compensation packages worth tens of millions (including comprehensive healthcare benefits), their customers often face impossible choices between basic medical care and other essential needs. This contrast - between those who profit from healthcare and those who cannot afford it - has created a modern healthcare aristocracy. The ability to influence policy, lobby government, and shape healthcare delivery sits firmly with this executive class, while ordinary citizens feel increasingly powerless to affect change in a system that directly impacts their lives.

This digitalised expression of what might be termed schadenfreude reveals several troubling developments in our socialised behaviour. At its core lies a deep-seated public resentment towards the commercialisation of healthcare in the American system. When health becomes a commodity, the public increasingly views healthcare executives not as guardians of public wellbeing, but as profiteers capitalising on human suffering.

The anonymised nature of social media has normalised reactions that most would hesitate to express in person. The transformation of a death into mere digital statistics - quantifiable in likes, shares, and emojis - further distances people from the human reality of the situation. This virtualisation of empathy, where profound events are reduced to simplified emotional reactions, may be fundamentally altering our capacity for nuanced emotional responses.

Karmic Justice

The accountability vacuum has only widened this societal rift. Healthcare executives rarely face consequences for decisions that affect millions of lives. When they do depart their roles, they often receive golden parachutes worth millions - further reinforcing public perception that the system is rigged beyond democratic repair. This powerlessness can morph into celebration when fate delivers what institutional accountability hasn't.

The hostile response stems from several interconnected wellsprings of public anger. At the forefront is the pricing crisis. Healthcare executives receive enormous compensation packages while countless Americans face devastating choices: rationing insulin, choosing between medication and food, or resorting to crowdfunding for basic procedures. This vivid contrast transforms their deaths, in many minds, from human tragedy to karmic justice.

Equally troubling is the deliberate opacity of the system itself. The byzantine complexity of insurance coverage, with its pre-authorisations, in-network restrictions, and denied claims, often appears deliberately engineered to deny care. This information asymmetry - where pricing, coverage terms, and decision-making processes remain intentionally obscured - breeds deep distrust. When people view their suffering as intentionally designed rather than an unfortunate flaw, they're more likely to view industry leaders as malevolent rather than just businesspeople.

Profits Over People

Many Americans have witnessed decisions where financial considerations seemed to outweigh medical needs - hospitals closing in poor areas, treatments denied for cost reasons, or medications priced beyond reach. The constant awareness that most other developed nations provide universal healthcare while Americans face medical bankruptcy can transform frustration into rage. Behind many of those emoji reactions likely lie stories of lost loved ones, crushing debt, or untreated conditions - people who followed all the rules of insurance coverage but still found themselves abandoned by the system in their moment of greatest need.

This systemic failure bears striking parallels to the Flint water crisis, where decision-makers prioritised cost savings over human wellbeing. In both cases, those most affected were predominantly lower-income and minority communities, whilst those making the decisions remained insulated from their consequences. Both situations represent fundamental betrayals of public trust in essential services. Water and healthcare are basic human needs, yet in both cases, leaders responsible for providing these services appeared to treat them as profit centres instead.

The systemic cover-ups present in both scenarios - Flint officials manipulating water testing data, healthcare companies obscuring pricing and denying clear medical needs - have led to deep public cynicism. Both cases highlight how regulatory systems meant to protect public welfare can fail when influenced by corporate interests.

What we're witnessing in these social media reactions, and in the corporate response of removing leadership information, is not merely anger at one executive or company, but a pressure release valve for decades of accumulated individual and collective trauma with a system that many feel values profit over human life. While the normalisation of celebrating anyone's death represents a concerning shift in our collective moral compass, these emoji reactions may represent one of the few ways many feel they can express their powerlessness against a system that has caused them or their loved ones real harm.

This behaviour, whilst troubling, serves as a barometer of public sentiment towards healthcare administration and broader systemic issues. It signals a fundamental breakdown in the social contract between healthcare providers and the public they purport to serve - a breakdown now playing out in real-time across social media platforms, even as healthcare corporations retreat behind digital walls and gated communities.

The visceral public response to a healthcare CEO's death reveals a deeper societal rupture - one that extends far beyond healthcare alone. This reaction crystallises a fundamental truth: we're witnessing the consequences of a system that prioritises corporate profits over human wellbeing across every sector of society.

This commodification of human needs manifests across multiple essential services:

In healthcare, profit-driven decisions determine who receives treatment and who doesn't. In housing, private equity firms are hoovering up residential properties, transforming homes into financial instruments and driving families into rental servitude. The education sector groans under privatisation pressures, whilst mounting student debt enslaves generations. Our water and utilities, as demonstrated by the Flint catastrophe, fall victim to cost-cutting measures that endanger lives. Even our food security wavers as corporate farming practices prioritise profit over nutrition and sustainability.

The labour landscape reveals similar patterns. Despite soaring corporate profits, workers face stagnant wages, diminishing benefits, and eroding job security. Companies aggressively suppress unionisation efforts while lavishing executives with ever-growing compensation packages. Automation decisions frequently prioritise cost savings over community impact, devastating local economies.

Our financial system operates with similar disregard for human consequences. Banks engage in predatory lending practices, foreclosing on families during economic crises while receiving government bailouts. Investment firms increasingly treat essential resources - from housing to water rights - as mere commodities for profit extraction.

The environmental sphere perhaps best illustrates this systemic failure. Corporate interests fund climate change denial, while pollution disproportionately affects lower-income neighbourhoods. Resource extraction damages communities while corporations delay environmental protection measures to preserve profit margins.

As these systemic failures reshape American society, their echoes increasingly resonate across the Atlantic. Britain's historical commitment to public services, epitomised by the post-war establishment of the National Health Service, once stood as a powerful counterpoint to American-style privatisation. Yet in recent decades, this ideological firewall has steadily eroded. The creeping marketisation of British public services offers a particularly revealing case study in how American-style corporate practices can infiltrate even the most established social democratic institutions. What makes the British experience especially pertinent is how it demonstrates the universality of these privatisation pressures - even in a nation with deeply entrenched public service traditions and a markedly different political culture. The transformation of British social services thus serves not merely as a parallel narrative, but as a crucial warning about the global reach of profit-driven social policy.

The UK

The United Kingdom's growing entanglement with private equity in essential services offers a cautionary tale of profit-driven social transformation. As firms like HC-One dominate elderly care, while companies such as CareTech control significant portions of children's social services and foster care, Britain witnesses the same commodification of human welfare that has plagued American healthcare. The invasion of private equity into these traditionally public sectors has introduced familiar patterns: cost-cutting measures that compromise care quality, staff reductions that increase workload pressures, and the prioritisation of shareholder returns over service delivery. The National Health Service, despite its public foundation, increasingly relies on private providers and consultancies, creating a shadow privatisation that mirrors American healthcare's dysfunction. Consider the cautionary example of Southern Cross Healthcare's catastrophic collapse in 2011, which left 31,000 elderly residents facing uncertain futures when the private equity-owned care home provider imploded under the weight of its own financial engineering. More recently, the 2019 breakdown of Four Seasons Health Care, owned by private equity firm Terra Firma, forced the closure or sale of hundreds of care homes, disrupting the lives of more than 16,000 vulnerable elderly residents. The education sector has witnessed similar disasters, exemplified by the Carillion collapse in 2018, which left dozens of school construction projects abandoned and thousands of school meals services in disarray. Even within the NHS, the failure of Circle Healthcare's pioneering private management of Hinchingbrooke Hospital - abandoned after just two years due to mounting financial losses and declining care standards - serves as a potent reminder of privatisation's risks. These failures demonstrate how private equity's aggressive profit-seeking strategies, typically involving high leverage and rapid cost-cutting, prove particularly dangerous when applied to essential social services.

This financialisation of basic human needs - from housing to healthcare, from childcare to elder support - represents a fundamental reconstruction of British society, where vulnerable populations become assets on a private equity spreadsheet. The public's growing awareness of this transformation has sparked resistance movements and calls for reform, yet the momentum of privatisation continues, suggesting that Britain risks replicating the very system that has generated such profound alienation and class division in American society.