America’s Pressure Cooker Is Reaching Its Breaking Point

an analysis on anger, grief, and movement forward

On December 4, twenty-six-year-old Luigi Mangione allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The online response was swift. Many condemned the violence. Others, however, felt… vindicated.

Those who felt vindicated did not know Thompson by name—only what he represented: a symbol of a health care system that feels broken beyond repair, leaving millions of Americans angry and betrayed every day.

I understand that anger.

Five years ago, my mom died suddenly from multisystem organ failure, and a stage 4 cancer diagnosis we discovered postmortem.

In the weeks after her death, I spent hours—days—poring over medical records, desperate to understand what had happened. Simply by reading, I saw the oversights her doctors made. I saw how preventable her death had been.

I was so fucking angry. I thought about taking action against the hospital, but th…