The reaction to the killing of health insurance executive Brian Thompson is the latest example of the strength of visceral anti-elite sentiment coursing through the country.

Even though the motive for the killing of Thompson, 50, is not yet clear, the gunman’s actions have drawn out antagonism toward the health insurance industry in general.

Social media users have sometimes outright gloated at the killing, which took place early Wednesday on a Manhattan street, as the UnitedHealthcare CEO prepared to address an investor conference. An as-yet-unidentified assailant came up from behind and shot him.

"Thoughts and sympathy today to all of those who have lost loved ones, because they were denied insurance claims by #UnitedHealthcare,” stated one post on social media. Another posted a mock logo for the company featuring crosshairs, along with the question, “Do you think I’d get sued if I made this as a shirt.”

Online, even some who have stopped well short of an endorsement of the fatal act have often referenced what they consider to be callous behavior by health insurance companies — a callousness that they blame for deaths in the thousands.

Their argument is that sympathy for the fate suffered by Thompson is not the whole story — and that people who have been victimized by the insurance industry’s greedy chicanery deserve their share of empathy too.

That view, right or wrong, places the health insurance industry alongside a whole cast of characters against whom populist rage has been turned in the past dozen or so years.

Among them are business titans at the time of the financial crisis and Great........

© The Hill