From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday, December 11th.

We'll get a deep take on the insurance industry and the reaction to the public glee among a surprising number of people

that has followed the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Here's a clip from Morning Edition today where NPR's Odette Yousef, National Security correspondent,

focusing on extremism, describes why the public reaction to this killing is different from the more common

and smaller expressions of sympathy for acts of political violence she's seen and for what kind

of extremist violence and what it might say about the state of things in our country.

So this killing, you know, seemed to tap into the feeling that seemingly most Americans have had at one time or another of frustration and helplessness with the healthcare industry.

What really struck me, though, is that I have typically seen people who commit mass violence or political violence praised, even venerated as martyrs, in really kind of dark corners of the extremist

world, you know, within online communities that emulate mass shooters, for instance, or in violent

white supremacist spaces. So seeing a much wider and mainstream public call this suspect,

a quote, hero, is troubling. And for extremist analysts that I

spoke to, you know, this really kind of speaks to how Americans have, over time, become more

open-minded toward political violence. NPR national security correspondent focusing on extremism, Odette Youssef.

With us now, Dr. Elizabeth Rosenthal, former physician, former New York Times health care reporter,

currently senior contributing editor to KFF Health News,

and author of the book, An American Sickness, How Health Care Became Big Business,

and How You Can Take It Back. The book came out in 2017. We'll do this in the context of our

series, 100 years of 100 things, but also with this relevance to the public response to the

murder in the last week. She was last on the show in August of last year

to talk about the cost of weight loss drugs

and how hospital mergers are pushing up medical bills,

...