Making the Moral Case Against Vigilante Justice

Travis Rieder, an associate research professor and the director of education initiatives at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, published an essay in the Dec. 13 New York Times titled “The Moral Case Against Vigilante Justice.”

In the essay, Rieder argues that being subjected to such broken systems shouldn’t break our morals: “This tragic situation should motivate us to change the institutions and structures that have failed so many people. But not to give murder a pass, and especially not to glorify it.”

Rieder has a long and difficult personal history with the U.S. healthcare system and insurance industry, as he detailed in his 2019 book In Pain. Despite that experience, he makes the case that “feeling bad for someone’s plight — or even sharing it — doesn’t make that person’s actions permissible. The accused man may well have been wronged by the health care system, as many people reading this most likely have. But he still committed murder.”

On the same day, Berman Institute faculty member Mario Macis was interviewed by the Baltimore Banner about consumers’ distrust of private insurance companies.

In a national survey Macis co-authored, private insurers rated lower on trust than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Medicare and Medicaid. Doctors and nurses rated highest. The reason, Macis said, is the belief that insurers prioritize profits over their clients’ health and well-being.

“This perception that the motivation of insurance companies — and pharmaceutical companies, too ― is making money destroys trust in these institutions,” he said.

Another factor is that requests for coverage are often denied, which contributes to a feeling that “insurance companies are not keeping their promise,” Macis said.