Former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz who was attacked for her light comments on the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson Wednesday stood by her comments and said it’s natural if “you have watched a loved one die because an insurance conglomerate has denied their life-saving treatment as a cost-cutting measure”.
Brian Thompson was killed by a masked man who has not been identified yet. The murder has opened a floodgate of celebration on social media as users complain how UniversalHealthcare’s denial of insurance payout is the highest. “And people wonder why we want these executives dead,” Lorenz wrote on BlueSky.
As some people were in shock as to whether a journalist actually called for violence, Taylor published a blog Friday clarifying that she did really mean what she wrote. She said she did not mean she personally wanted such CEOs to be killed but she was speaking for many Americans who have been harassed at the hand of such insurance companies.
“Let me be super clear: my post uses a collective “we” and is explaining the public sentiment. It is not me personally saying “I want these executives dead and so we should kill them.” I am explaining that thousands of Americans (myself included) are fed up with our barbaric healthcare system and the people at the top who rake in millions while inflicting pain, suffering, and death on millions of innocent people,” Lorenz said.
“This is what the media fails to understand. They don’t see insurance CEOs who sanction the deaths of thousands of innocent people a year by denying them coverage, often coverage doctors deem medically necessary, as violent,” she wrote,
“People have very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because these executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering. I think it’s good to call out this broken system and the people in power who enable it. Again, not so they can be murdered, but so that we can change the system and start holding people in power accountable for their actions,” she wrote.
