Bill Burr Says the Shooting of Brian Thompson Was All Part of the ‘Dirty Game’ of Healthcare

The police may be closing in on the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. After all, no one knocks off a made man in New York City and gets away with it.

As of this morning, law enforcement officials are questioning a man in Pennsylvania in connection to the high-profile killing of Thompson in front of the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan this past Wednesday. After the NYPD found shell casings bearing inscriptions that read “deny,” “defend” and “depose” at the scene of the shooting, the internet immediately jumped to the conclusion that the yet-unnamed killer must have assassinated Thompson as retribution for UnitedHealthcare and the entire insurance industry’s aggressive approach to denying claims for crucial medical care, as outlined in the 2010 book Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It by Rutgers Law professor Jay M. Feinman.

Stand-up comedy star and podcaster Bill Burr, on the other hand, has his own theories about the shooting, and they revolve around the fact that Thompson faced accusations of insider trading to the tune of nine figures in the time leading up to his death. On a recent episode of his podcast Anything Better?, which he co-hosts with fellow comic Paul Virzi, Burr explained that, for all the outrage and excitement over the supposedly unprecedented slaying, the violent end of Thompson was nothing that we haven’t already seen in an episode of The Sopranos.

“We were just talking about that CEO that got fucking whacked,” Burr began the conversation. “You know what’s funny? I was sitting there reading an article, and the guy was like, ‘Oh my God, (Thompson) was such a great guy, he had a wife and kids, he was such a great guy.’ And then you find out he and the other guys he was working for are getting sued for $121 million for dumping a stock and not letting the other people know.”

Regardless of whom the police picked up in Pennsylvania and of how the internet has politicized the shooting in the days since Thompson’s death, Burr believes that the case is already closed. “It’s like, there’s your motive!” Burr said of Thompson’s supposed swindle. “They’re gangsters, dude! Fuckin’ gangsters! And then one of them gets whacked, and some people are like, ‘(*Bill Burr whiny voice*) Oh, my God, he was such a good guy!’”

“You know what’s fucked up Paul?” Burr asked his co-host. “I’ve been doing a bit in my act talking about how it was better when the mob was running shit, because they were regulated simply because it was illegal. And I know they still were making a bunch of money, but they couldn’t be flashing around. They had wars, they whacked each other and shit. And I was saying like, ‘How fucking great would it be to see the head of fucking Walmart get whacked by the head of fucking Target? Have a nice old-fashioned fucking war, thin the herd and keep everybody honest. But the problem is, those guys are all on the legal side of stealing."  

However, even the legal gangsters sometimes have to pay the price when they cross the line with other CEOs, and Burr believes Thompson found himself in a “fuck around, find out” situation with his fast-and-loose treatment of insurance stocks. “It’s a dirty game, Paul,” Burr said, shaking his head, “Healthcare. Dirty game.”