From nearly all ethical standpoints this murder was unethical and unjust.
Really? I definitely don’t agree with that. The starting base that you’re likely missing is that this man is directly responsible for the preventable deaths of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people. He joined UHC as the CEO in 2021, so has had some time to work and adjust the company. Since he joined, he has changed their policy and implemented measures to deny additional claims (see, chatbot rejecting peoples claims), causing their denial rate to skyrocket to ~30%. Source is here in the XLS files the government provides. UnitedHealtcare claims it pays 90% of claims but hasnt actually provided data showing that.
Since his company posted enormous, increasing profits in every year he was CEO, and the denial rates, I’d argue he’s led the company to deny healthcare claims.
Some easy ethical frameworks where this is acceptable?
Utilitarianism - you could argue that killing him has caused companies to back off other healthcare cuts (see BlueCross and their anaesthesia cuts). The ripples it has caused are likely to impact what decisions CEOs of other healthcare organizations make regarding patient care and denials.
Natural law theory essentially argues that law and morality are separate. An example that might be clearer is slavery - I’d argue killing a slaver is morally correct, because I believe that slavery is immoral, even is slavery is legal in that country. I believe that healthcare should not be a for-profit industry, and that denying people care to prioritize “line goes up” is immoral. Those who are making the decisions to do that are thus directly contributing to the preventable deaths of countless people.
Rousseau talks about the social contract theory, and basically says if a government approves immoral actions (which I count for-profit healthcare as), they forfeit their legitimacy, and thus people have the right to rebel.
Retribuutivism by Kant argues punishment should be proportional to the crime. If you accept that he is responsible for deaths (not legally responsible, but morally), then this is definitely moral, though its worth noting Kant though murder is a serious, irreversible action and recommended other options before murder.
I could keep going, but those are the easy ones.
I would agree, except that this has been a problem ongoing for the last twenty years with no progress made by protesting/following legal channels. From my perspective, without the threat of violence, both US parties have too much to gain by maintaining the status quo to respond to general peaceful protesting or trying to legally change things. If your perspective is that these people are causing deaths, and the legal system isn’t willing to change quickly enough, an argument could be made that the slow protests/incremental change is causing more deaths.