It begins with a lawsuit so absurd, it almost reads like satire. But it’s real. BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, is suing UnitedHealth — not because the company isn’t doing enough, but because it suddenly started doing too much. More precisely: because it’s providing too much medical care. Too many treatments. Too many surgeries. Too many approved lives.
The story begins with the murder of Brian Thompson in December 2024, CEO of the American health insurance giant UnitedHealth, shot dead on a street in Manhattan — allegedly by a man who had been denied his cancer treatment. It wasn’t just an assassination — it was an amplifier. A glaring flare above a system that has long been engineered not for care, but for denial, for cost-cutting, for death.
UnitedHealth, publicly damaged and suddenly in the spotlight, reacted — cautiously perhaps, but noticeably. More claims were approved. After Thompson’s death, UnitedHealth came under enormous pressure, leading to an increase in authorized medical services. This shift in company policy led to a decline in profits, which in turn alarmed shareholders. More surgeries approved. More bills paid — bills that would otherwise have been shredded in fine print. And that’s exactly what is driving BlackRock into a rage.
Because they do the math differently. Every approved round of chemotherapy is a dividend deficit. Every sanctioned procedure is a hit to shareholder value. Every human life saved through treatment is a number in the wrong column. And so the charge in the lawsuit reads: UnitedHealth “failed to adequately inform” its investors that it might, going forward, act like an actual insurance company. That it might stop rubber-stamping rejections by algorithm, and start consulting physicians. That instead of death by bureaucracy, it might allow a trace of humanity. A violation of the system’s logic.
This lawsuit is no anomaly. It is the system revealing itself. Showing what it truly is: not sick, but healthy in its cruelty. BlackRock was never just an investor. It was co-architect. It helped design programs that tied CEO bonuses to rejection rates. It applauded business models built on the suffering of others. And now that the house of cards is beginning to tremble, it reaches for its favorite tool: the lawsuit.
Not against violence. Not against poverty. But against empathy.
What is being defended here isn’t a company. It’s a principle: that in the United States of America, life itself is a business risk. That healthcare is too expensive. That humanity is dangerous to the bottom line. The lawsuit doesn’t just say: You helped too much. It says: You didn’t warn us that you were going to help.
And if it succeeds — which is likely — it will become a blueprint. For a healthcare system that is no longer a system, but an industry. For a financial logic that considers murder a business hazard, but care a breach of contract. For an economy that views every successful surgery as a failure of profit maximization.
Maybe this is the moment we must decide: whether we truly want to live in a world where death is financially sound and life is legally liable. Whether we accept that someone like BlackRock won’t be sued — but rewarded.
Because the truly absurd thing about this story is not the lawsuit. It’s that the lawsuit is entirely rational.
English 
German 
