Was This Personal or Professional: (UHC CEO murder)

[BlueRidge]

I've been thinking about why the response to the shooting has bothered me so much, and what it comes down to is that I think the response, much of it part of the online barrage that is now such a constant, seems to me to be in the same vein as what led to the results of the most recent election: rage, extreme negativity, an unrealistically dark picture of everything in our country that leads people to embrace at least rhetoric that is outside the old norms. It feels like part of the same out of control political/culture that is destroying our politics.

In any case, a quote from an article at the Guardian:

“I have been alarmed by the overwhelming amount of celebration I’ve seen online from people who are applauding what is fundamentally an act of vigilante violence,” said Jared Holt, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “Many people have real and valid reasons to despise health insurance companies and corporate greed, but I am concerned that so many people seem to think shooting someone dead in the street is a valid response to that anger.”

There’s reason to worry: data points to a global rise in political assassinations and violence, especially in the west.

Violence may work to get attention, it's very questionable as to whether that attention works to bring about positive change. Often it is just the opposite, as power exerts itself to shut down political opposition and acts to restrict an open society.

 

[Vagabond]

I've been thinking about why the response to the shooting has bothered me so much, and what it comes down to is that I think the response, much of it part of the online barrage that is now such a constant, seems to me to be in the same vein as what led to the results of the most recent election: rage, extreme negativity, an unrealistically dark picture of everything in our country that leads people to embrace at least rhetoric that is outside the old norms. It feels like part of the same out of control political/culture that is destroying our politics.

As much as I agree with you, there is another reason why the response bothers me. People in this thread and elsewhere rushed to judgment as to the killer's mindset and many persist in their beliefs even though it has become clear that he had or easily could have had medical insurance at least until earlier this year, that the insurance paid for his back surgery, that he had some sort of mental problems (which apparently weren't addressed when he was on insurance), and that his motives are not specific to UnitedHealthcare, in particular or medical insurance in general.

I hope there is a public trial and the defense is allowed to detail the callous behavior of this company.

Wow! There is really a lot of gallows humor on social media right now.
It's like Facebook ,Youtube, and Reddit are having a National day of Schadenfreude.

a point made on SM is that through denial of claims, health insurers regularly kill people. Meanwhile, this guy was raking in tens of millions of dollars at the expense of people's wellbeing. It's easy to understand the motive and in some ways it's almost the perfect crime because the pool of suspects - disgruntled insureds - is so vast.

My money is on this guy being involved with the shadiest of shady including organized crime.

Those are the types of people that usually make it to the CEO seat of large corporations unfortunately.

This is the main thing I have thought as well. Is organized crime making a comeback in the NYC area?

My money is on an ex-employee. The shooter had to have known that even though the meeting was at the Hilton, he wasn’t staying there.

I'm not sure CEOs are innocent victims

I would bet good money that when more comes out, there will be a friend or family member he loved dearly who has suffered at the hands of the fcuked up American "healthcare" system, and likely that very company.

A few things that could be discussed in this thread but are not:

• Why were Mangione's mental health problems left unaddressed?
• "Ghost" guns
• Mangione's sense of isolation from and antipathy to society and his attraction to "masculine" hobbies and groups

 

[BlueRidge]

I agree @Vagabond, it bothered me from the beginning that people were projecting their own views onto the shooter from the first reports of this murder of a health care CEO and continue to see the shooting as being motivated by personal experience with the health insurance system when it seems pretty clear that is not the case.

It seemed to me clear from the first reports that this was a targeted assassination of a high profile corporate leader, a cold blooded murder in broad daylight, something that is threatening to the security of society but I saw the reaction brushing that aside to talk about health insurance due to the victim's position.

 

[once_upon]

Before we knew much about the shooter, we were speculating on a motive. Yes, cold blooded murder. Just as most shootings in school settings. Did anyone question from the first - this murder would be attributed to an unstable murderer?

 

[BlueRidge]

It was so brazen and seemingly well executed, and gave the appearance of a targeted assassination of a prominent person, that I thought it was going to turn out to be a hired hit man.

 

[MacMadame]

I think Luigi Mangione is of the same ilk as Daniel Penny and these crimes are very disturbing.

I find Penny's actions more disturbing because what he did is something ordinary people might emulate as reasonable behavior. I don't think most people think assassinating a CEO is reasonable behavior and something to emulate, even the ones celebrating Mangione as a hero. Most people don't want to go to prison for their cause and/or think cold-blooded killing is wrong.

I feel we've seen enough evidence of people admiring shooters then themselves engaging in mass shooting that I'm not so confident that this won't inspire more.

In terms of copycat killings, people like Mangione are going to find people to be inspired by. Mangione, himself, admired the Unabomber. Whose crimes are ancient history to a lot of people who weren't even born when they happened. Yes, these things are on the rise, especially school shootings, but I don't think new instances are sparking this increase. Anger is.

Violence may work to get attention, it's very questionable as to whether that attention works to bring about positive change. Often it is just the opposite, as power exerts itself to shut down political opposition and acts to restrict an open society.

Violence works and so does non-violence. I think you need both. No, not assassinating people. But, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said. "riots are the language of the unheard." People said the group Act Up was going to set back life for LGBTQ+ people, but history says differently.

I don't think healthcare is going to change just by people complaining about it. People have been complaining for decades and it's only gotten worse. At best, civil resistance is going to be needed. IMO.

 

[Vagabond]

Before we knew much about the shooter, we were speculating on a motive. Yes, cold blooded murder. Just as most shootings in school settings. Did anyone question from the first - this murder would be attributed to an unstable murderer?

Read the thread title. Go back to the early posts in this thread, including ones I quoted in my most recent post. Go back People suspected it could be organized crime or someone hired by his wife. Generally speaking hired assassins and mobsters are not mentally unstable. If they were, they wouldn't be successful in their line of work, would they?

 

[once_upon]

Read the thread title. Go back to the early posts in this thread, including ones I quoted in my most recent post. Go back People suspected it could be organized crime or someone hired by his wife. Generally speaking hired assassins and mobsters are not mentally unstable. If they were, they wouldn't be successful in their line of work, would they?

Given my previous experiences with families who were devastated from medical bills, families with murder/suicides with adult children left to deal with aftermath - that's where I went.
Sorry - apparently that was the wrong way to think about it. That I should look as it was a hit man.

 

[MacMadame]

Read the thread title. Go back to the early posts in this thread, including ones I quoted in my most recent post. Go back People suspected it could be organized crime or someone hired by his wife.

And I said those posts would age badly.

Btw I don't agree with @BlueRidge that it is clear that this murder was not motivated by personal experience with the healthcare system. For one thing, I think it's too soon to know that.

Sure he had healthcare insurance when he had back surgery but he just turned 26 and so would be kicked off his parents' insurance. Yes, he told someone the back surgery worked but soon after that he disappeared. Maybe the pain came back. And finally, he clearly had unaddressed mental health issues and our healthcare system is horrible about that (as I know from experience trying to get help for my kid).

I am going to wait to see what he says about it. Not what other people have decided is true. If he says he never had bad experiences with healthcare but knows it's f'ed up for others, I will accept that. But until he says more, I'm going to wait and see.

 

[skategal]

It was so brazen and seemingly well executed, and gave the appearance of a targeted assassination of a prominent person, that I thought it was going to turn out to be a hired hit man.

Same. And I thought it was going to be something personal or business related as it was so targeted as most murders are.

 

[BittyBug]

As much as I agree with you, there is another reason why the response bothers me. People in this thread and elsewhere rushed to judgment as to the killer's mindset and many persist in their beliefs even though it has become clear that he had or easily could have had medical insurance at least until earlier this year, that the insurance paid for his back surgery, that he had some sort of mental problems (which apparently weren't addressed when he was on insurance, and that his motives are not specific to UnitedHealthcare, in particular or medical insurance in general.

You don't know that his motives weren't specific to medical insurance in general. And if they weren't, why did he etch 'Delay,' 'Deny' and something else on the bullets?

A few things that could be discussed in this thread but are not:

• Why were Mangione's mental health problems left unaddressed?
• "Ghost" guns
• Mangione's sense of isolation from and antipathy to society and his attraction to "masculine" hobbies and groups

If you're interested in discussing these issues, perhaps you could comment on them instead of providing a sanctimonious rant about how the rest of the posters in this thread missed the real issues that you so clearly saw. (And for all your rewinding the tape, the fact that a ghost gun was used wasn't known until they caught him. Until that point, experts speculated that it was a veterinarian gun.)

This is a message board. People talk. And in the absence of information, they speculate. Quelle horreur.

 

[BlueRidge]

Btw I don't agree with @BlueRidge that it is clear that this murder was not motivated by personal experience with the healthcare system. For one thing, I think it's too soon to know that.

Yes different information could come out. But there has already been a lot that has.

I am going to wait to see what he says about it. Not what other people have decided is true. If he says he never had bad experiences with healthcare but knows it's f'ed up for others, I will accept that. But until he says more, I'm going to wait and see.

At this point he may have a vested interest in terms of a defense and claims on sympathy to say that he had bad experiences. I'm not sure I would trust what he says.

As far as what has been discussed in this thread, its at times become a discussion about our health care system, and I think that is because people want to talk about that because its important to them, threads drift to what people want to talk about. I didn't mean to suggest anyone who chose to talk about health care when it was already the subject were making any statement about the killing.

I do think that our health care situation is not as catastrophic as people make it out to be but that's an issue for PI (see thread linked earlier).

As far as copy cat crimes or more targeted shootings not being likely, I hope folks are right that there is little risk of that.

 

[MacMadame]

At this point he may have a vested interest in terms of a defense and claims on sympathy to say that he had bad experiences. I'm not sure I would trust what he says.

I trust that over randos on the internet who don't even know him. Plus once he starts talking, we'll have something to analyze and that may lead us to think he's lying to get off or it may not.

As far as copy cat crimes or more targeted shootings not being likely, I hope folks are right that there is little risk of that.

That isn't what I said. First of all, targeted shootings are already up so I'm not going to say they are not likely. I'm just saying that these "lone shooters" have plenty of role models.

 

[BlueRidge]

I trust that over randos on the internet who don't even know him. Plus once he starts talking, we'll have something to analyze and that may lead us to think he's lying to get off or it may not.

I was basing my statement that it seems clear he doesn't have personal experience from reports in mainstream media outlets, particularly the article linked in this thread from the New York Times.

 

[Rob]

This Link to his “manifesto” https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto - shows that the state of health insurance was on his mind. Michael Moore has responded. https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/a-manifesto-against-for-profit-health It’s clear he is familiar with the Dely, Deny, Defend book and Elisabeth Rosenthal’s book as well as Moore’s Sicko. Not a random choice of just any corporate CEO.

 

[Coco]

The Michael Moore post is worth reading.

Here's an excerpt:

Yes, I condemn murder, and that’s why I condemn America’s broken, vile, rapacious, bloodthirsty, unethical, immoral health care industry and I condemn every one of the CEOs who are in charge of it and I condemn every politician who takes their money and keeps this system going instead of tearing it up, ripping it apart, and throwing it all away. We need to replace this system with something sane, something caring and loving — something that keeps people alive.

 

[sk9tingfan]

Read the thread title. Go back to the early posts in this thread, including ones I quoted in my most recent post. Go back People suspected it could be organized crime or someone hired by his wife. Generally speaking hired assassins and mobsters are not mentally unstable. If they were, they wouldn't be successful in their line of work, would they?

As I named the original thread title, my thinking was a function of adverse care management decisions that applied to him personally or as a function of the professional underpinnings of the care management industry and how it functions. Not as a function of the CEO'S marriiage circumstances(I wasn't aware of them at that time) nor was I aware of the civil cases at that time.

 

[Vagabond]

Penn condemns professor’s support for alumnus charged with killing CEO

“Her comments regarding the shooting of Brian Thompson in New York City were antithetical to the values of both the School of Arts and Sciences and the University of Pennsylvania,” Kallberg wrote in the statement.

www.thedp.com

“I have never been prouder to be a professor at the University of P3nnsylvania,” Alekseyeva wrote in a post on TikTok. She also shared a post from 34th Street Magazine on her Instagram story about Mangione, referring to him as the “icon we all need and deserve.”

?‍

ETA:

“Late last night I posted a TikTok, as well as several stories on my Instagram,” Alekseyeva wrote in a follow-up post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, later on Tuesday night. “These were completely insensitive and inappropriate, and I retract them wholly. I do not condone violence and I am genuinely regretful of any harm the posts have caused.”

Like a certain poster in this thread, she says she posts things that she doesn’t believe. I believe what each of them wrote spontaneously, not what they wrote when they were called out.

 

[barbk]

Whatever his trigger, it is clear that there is a broad and deep repugnance at the tremendous human cost our health system imposes on us. The shooter is no hero, but neither was his victim. The platitudes spouted by United Healthcare Group's CEO were as fake as the supposed medical reviews UHC did to deny or delay care for so many. I don't know how closely politicians and regulators are watching this, but I hope it provides some incentive to move to an approach that is more fair and honest.

 

[BlueRidge]

It seems about time this thread move to PI when we are posting about Michael Moore's opinions.

 

[Vagabond]

The shooter is no hero, but neither was his victim.

So what? Nothing justifies any assault on him, much less killing him in cold blood. Your post is not much different from Private Citizen's statement that the Pelosis deserved the attack on Paul Pelosi.

The more people blame or degrade the victim, the more they degrade our system of justice.

 

[Aussie Willy]

Whatever his trigger, it is clear that there is a broad and deep repugnance at the tremendous human cost our health system imposes on us. The shooter is no hero, but neither was his victim. The platitudes spouted by United Healthcare Group's CEO were as fake as the supposed medical reviews UHC did to deny or delay care for so many. I don't know how closely politicians and regulators are watching this, but I hope it provides some incentive to move to an approach that is more fair and honest.

I have seen comments, particularly from young people who have grown up in an environment going to school with a threat to their lives every day by guns, why should they feel any empathy for a rich white guy who represents a business model that puts people's lives are risk by the decisions they make?

The following comment was posted on a Tiktok where they showed the Cell Block Tango clip from Chicago in reference to the shooting:

U know how people have these little habits that get you down? like Brian. Brian like to reject claims, no not reject, deny

Maybe this sums it up.

 

[barbk]

So what? Nothing justifies any assault on him, much less killing him in cold blood. Your post is not much different from Private Citizen's statement that the Pelosis deserved the attack on Paul Pelosi.

The more people blame or degrade the victim, the more they degrade our system of justice.

In NO way did I say that his murder was justified. Ever. I'm simply unwilling to accept a hagiography when the evidence is clear that he approved and was given bonuses based on inhumane practices he implemented at UHC.

 

[ilovepaydays]

And………we already have a Luigi Mangione documentary in the works. ?

 

[MacMadame]

I was basing my statement that it seems clear he doesn't have personal experience from reports in mainstream media outlets, particularly the article linked in this thread from the New York Times.

Most of those statements were from people on the periphery of his circle. People he went to school with - years ago, a roommate. His family isn't talking and neither is he.

There is a 6-month period in which no one knows where he was or what he was thinking. I think they are critical to understanding his state of mind and what put him on this path.

The more people blame or degrade the victim, the more they degrade our system of justice.

The internet is not our system of justice. Until he gets off because everyone hates our healthcare system (which I don't expect to happen), our justice system is not involved.

 

[once_upon]

As much as I agree with you, there is another reason why the response bothers me. People in this thread and elsewhere rushed to judgment as to the killer's mindset and many persist in their beliefs even though it has become clear that he had or easily could have had medical insurance at least until earlier this year, that the insurance paid for his back surgery, that he had some sort of mental problems (which apparently weren't addressed when he was on insurance), and that his motives are not specific to UnitedHealthcare, in particular or medical insurance in general.















A few things that could be discussed in this thread but are not:

• Why were Mangione's mental health problems left unaddressed?
• "Ghost" guns
• Mangione's sense of isolation from and antipathy to society and his attraction to "masculine" hobbies and groups

 

[once_upon]

I don't seem to be able to link the comment I made, that @Vagabond quoted me...but you took only a portion of the statement I said. I couldn't remember being so callous as saying the executive deserved to be murder. So I went back and found that PARTAL comment. I did not. You left out the part where I said murder wasn't a solution or even deserved. And if I am the poster who always seems to backtrack, I don't think I do. But your opinion is valid to the point as it is your opinion. Call me out by name if I am

Corporate practices are not innocent. Participation in unethical practices is not innocent. But they DO NOT deserve murder. Please do not indicate that I thought it was.justifable or necessary.

 

[BlueRidge]

Anyway, Mangione was not an outlaw, if his act was political which it seems to be in a vague way, he's a terrorist. Hopefully that is not so romantic.

Prosecutors charge suspect with killing UnitedHealthcare CEO as an act of terrorism​

Luigi Mangione, who was arrested last week in Pennsylvania after a days-long manhunt, was charged with 11 counts, including one count of murder in the first degree and two counts of murder in the second degree.

 

[Private Citizen]

And if I am the poster who always seems to backtrack, I don't think I do. But your opinion is valid to the point as it is your opinion. Call me out by name if I am

I'm pretty sure that one was me, and in this case it was fair. I said one thing on the Pelosi attack thread, but then I did post something petty (that I didn't remember) in a separate thread long after the attack. I backtracked near-immediately after the petty statement. I probably do post and then walk back things more often than I should, and Vagabond is fair to question "which one is real."

 

[PRlady]

The Manhattan DA is charging him as a terrorist. That’s some bullshit.