A brazen, targeted attack

December 4, 2024 11:00 AM

A health insurance executive assassinated This morning in New York an unknown person shot dead Brian Thompson, the CEO of health insurance company UnitedHealthcare. Early reports describe the killer waiting for the victim, then leaving the scene, pursued by a growing manhunt.

UnitedHealthcare is owned by UnitedHealth Group

(unpaywalled NYT link)

posted by doctornemo (1241 comments total)

Fwiw, the New York Post posted what they say is a surveillance video of the killing.
The usual disclaimers (the Post; murder) apply.
posted by doctornemo at 11:02 AM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

WHAT? Stochastic terrorism isn’t just for the right wing anymore? Something about reaping the whirlwind?
posted by rikschell at 11:05 AM on December 4, 2024 [21 favorites]

Stochastic terrorism isn’t just for the right wing anymore?

I learned it by watching you!
posted by phunniemee at 11:06 AM on December 4, 2024 [39 favorites]

A friendly reminder that you're on MetaFilter and while you will definitely run into some folks enjoying the gallows humor/schadenfreude of this situation they are basically guaranteed to be doing so figuratively/symbolically, as an expression of contempt for the corrupt and exploitative health care industry and a general distaste for the predatory superrich rather than out of a fondness for murder or general contempt for human life.

Thank you.

So yeah, fuck this guy.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:07 AM on December 4, 2024 [179 favorites]

There are some great threads on BlueSky about how exactly United has been even more fucky than usual insurance companies - for example, they denied mental health and addiction claims for eight years even though it was illegal to do so because they figured that addicts and the mentally ill wouldn't be able to appeal.

So uh yeah not shedding any tears on this one. May the rest quake in fear.
posted by corb at 11:09 AM on December 4, 2024 [74 favorites]

I mean, they'll probably just hike rates and deny more claims to pay for their C-suite to have their own secret service.

But for today, I hope they are sweating.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:11 AM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

Thompson is survived by a spouse, two children, and an enormous ER copay.
posted by mittens at 11:12 AM on December 4, 2024 [50 favorites]

From NYT:
Mr. Thompson had recently received several threats, according to one of the people, and the police were investigating the source and exact nature of those threats. The person noted that health care executives can often receive threats because of the nature of their work.

Only in America does this sentence make sense
posted by Jon_Evil at 11:12 AM on December 4, 2024 [118 favorites]

Was the gunshot wound considered a pre-existing condition?

Boo. Hoo.
posted by tristeza at 11:12 AM on December 4, 2024 [21 favorites]

rather than out of a fondness for murder or general contempt for human life

I'm glad that we're not condoning murder in general here, just applauding specific murders.
posted by swift at 11:13 AM on December 4, 2024 [18 favorites]

The only thing unethical here is the waste of good eatin’
posted by rikschell at 11:14 AM on December 4, 2024 [12 favorites]

I'm glad that we're not condoning murder in general here, just applauding specific murders.

Dang, even if you explain the joke literally...
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:14 AM on December 4, 2024 [31 favorites]

dude had the blood of untold numbers of people on his hands via cooking up new ways to deny claims. I'm gonna cheer for this one and I bet most people across the US will feel the same way.
posted by Ferreous at 11:15 AM on December 4, 2024 [24 favorites]

I assume swift was just making a modest proposal…
posted by rikschell at 11:15 AM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

There are some great threads on The Blue about how exactly United has been even more fucky than usual insurance companies - for example, they forced people out of rehab by algorithm
posted by ambrosen at 11:17 AM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

Just hear those slay bells jingling ring ting tingling, too!
posted by snofoam at 11:17 AM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

Leftists are morally split on this killing, with many saying it should have been possible to fit a guillotine on the bike.
posted by mittens at 11:18 AM on December 4, 2024 [85 favorites]

Blue Cross really picked an auspicious day to announce they weren't going to cover the cost of anaesthesia if the operation takes too long.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:18 AM on December 4, 2024 [77 favorites]

The nursing subreddit is not holding back any punch, example...

Bullet in chest (ICD-10 S21.301A: unspecified open wound of thorax with penetration into thoracic cavity) sounds like a pre-existing condition. Sorry, no coverage. Maybe try physical therapy.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:18 AM on December 4, 2024 [97 favorites]

I'm genuinely curious about the eventual prosecution, because how on earth will the DAs ever find 12 people who haven't had a negative interaction with their health insurance carrier.
posted by phunniemee at 11:20 AM on December 4, 2024 [75 favorites]

Easily. Lots of people have no insurance.
posted by humbug at 11:20 AM on December 4, 2024 [51 favorites]

As I was in the process of commenting when the last post got nuked, people assuming this is a "delightful" incident of random political violence are jumping the gun. This is equally, if not more, likely to be the result of a marital or property dispute or other personal matter.
posted by praemunire at 11:21 AM on December 4, 2024 [18 favorites]

Easily. Lots of people have no insurance.

Pony request: favorite, but make it sad.
posted by phunniemee at 11:21 AM on December 4, 2024 [66 favorites]

Wait, I thought we weren't supposed to discriminate against billionaires anymore
posted by SystematicAbuse at 11:25 AM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

This is horrible irrespective of this man's profession. However, I really wonder about the backstory and I'm imagining (as have others here) someone who's denial of health coverage maybe for someone they loved resulted in tragedy.
posted by bluesky43 at 11:26 AM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

The shooter looks to have a silencer on their gun. That, along with the absolute calm they display, says this was a professional assassination. I don't think this was a jilted patient.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:26 AM on December 4, 2024 [18 favorites]

I guess I'll be the one to say murder is wrong, even in this case. There are a lot of penalties short of killing someone that make your point.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:29 AM on December 4, 2024 [28 favorites]

UnitedHealthcare was recently the victim of a huge cyberattack that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and payouts of tens of millions in crypto to criminal gangs.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:29 AM on December 4, 2024 [15 favorites]

I guess I'll be the one to say murder is wrong

brave 🙏
posted by phunniemee at 11:30 AM on December 4, 2024 [64 favorites]

Perhaps we’ve finally reached that Cyberpunk milestone of inter-corporate assassinations.

“Begun the Insurance Wars have.”
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:31 AM on December 4, 2024 [31 favorites]

what is that emoji after brave?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:31 AM on December 4, 2024

Man, I don't like insurance companies or CEOs at all, but when systems start to destablize into assassinations that's rarely good on the whole for society.

Also, sure the shooter had a silencer on their weapon, but it's weird that it was either single action or some kind of crap slide that required constant re-cocking. (makes me think it's a homemade weapon)
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:32 AM on December 4, 2024 [23 favorites]

Didn't Cory Doctorow pen a short story that started off this way? I always felt like it was far too likely to be considered SF...
posted by Rudy_Wiser at 11:33 AM on December 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

To paraphrase a much better-written Facebook response on MPR's story:

It's sad that his life was cut so short, before he could experience the joy of receiving confusing, incorrect bills for his care, navigating labyrinthine processes to appeal, before dying due to being denied coverage for the care that would save his life, and then these problems passing on to his children.
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:34 AM on December 4, 2024 [81 favorites]

Read somewhere that C-Suites and upper management should be forced onto their company's (ie rapacity vampire squid parasite) worst plans. Fuck yea.

Interesting timing with this 'news' of further horribleness from the insurance industry: Anthem stating it's not going to pay for anesthesia for patients when operations go longer than they are supposed to.
posted by WatTylerJr at 11:34 AM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

This is going to turn out to be completely "Law & Order" style the wife ordered the hit, isn't it. Just like when the tech bro got stabbed and the news was all "homeless OUT OF CONTROL" when it was just another tech bro stabbing him because he was doing the deed with his girlfriend.
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 11:35 AM on December 4, 2024 [24 favorites]

Argh, sorry CheeseDigestsAll!
posted by WatTylerJr at 11:35 AM on December 4, 2024

when systems start to destabilize into assassinations that's rarely good on the whole for society.

Oh, if a person is looking for omens that society is destabilizing, they don't have to look too hard these days.

I mean, beyond [gestures around generally], the only businesses that have opened up near me lately are dispensaries, video gambling parlors, and a crypto mining supply store.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:35 AM on December 4, 2024 [30 favorites]

In Russia, wouldn’t something like this mean that someone wasn’t playing ball with Putin’s kleptocracy? It could be a harbinger of the future. Legally, everything is in place for a President to order this kind of thing with impunity.
posted by snofoam at 11:35 AM on December 4, 2024 [7 favorites]

If it's not an angry patient, can it at least be a secret gay lover so we can get a Ryan Murphy show out of it?
posted by mittens at 11:36 AM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

Every billionaire should be scared to show their face in public at any time.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:36 AM on December 4, 2024 [47 favorites]

Also, sure the shooter had a silencer on their weapon, but it's weird that it was either single action or some kind of crap slide that required constant re-cocking. (makes me think it's a homemade weapon)

I saw speculation online that the shooter used sub-sonic rounds, which 1) are quieter than normal rounds because they don't break the sound barrier, and 2) often require manual cycling of the pistol because they don't have enough powder to trigger it themselves.
posted by miltthetank at 11:36 AM on December 4, 2024 [20 favorites]

Absolutely nothing about that video gives off a "first time shooting a guy on the street" vibe.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:38 AM on December 4, 2024 [16 favorites]

In Russia, wouldn’t something like this mean that someone wasn’t playing ball with Putin’s kleptocracy? It could be a harbinger of the future. Legally, everything is in place for a President to order this kind of thing with impunity.

Biden's lame duck era is just getting started, baby
posted by theodolite at 11:38 AM on December 4, 2024 [7 favorites]

brat summer just keeps going!
posted by snofoam at 11:39 AM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

It's not happening, but hypothetically speaking, if Biden were Seal team Six-ing various CEOs on his way out, he'd really be shoring up his reputation on his way out.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:40 AM on December 4, 2024 [20 favorites]

I saw speculation online that the shooter used sub-sonic rounds

That would also make sense. I haven't shot subsonics in ages for the very reason of cycling problems.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:40 AM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

The shooter looks to have a silencer on their gun. That, along with the absolute calm they display, says this was a professional assassination

idk some people are just good at guns. A pistol suppressor is either 3d-printable (works for a few shots anyway) or not all that expensive, despite being a NFA item.

Good for him thinking about his hearing! wouldn’t want to rack up additional copays at the otologist.
posted by supercres at 11:44 AM on December 4, 2024 [21 favorites]

If you're going to wag your finger for my ghoulishly blasé attitude about this shocking crime, please at least do me the honor of picturing me as Morticia Addams
posted by theodolite at 11:46 AM on December 4, 2024 [35 favorites]

Man, I don't like insurance companies or CEOs at all, but when systems start to destablize into assassinations that's rarely good on the whole for society.

We left “good on the whole for society” behind a little while ago and it doesn’t look like we’re going back for a while. Instead of lying down and just taking it, enjoying the schadenfreude is a valid choice.

Maybe you are a “they go low we go high” person and that’s fine for you, but a lot of us have lost patience with always being the bigger person and always getting kicked in the teeth for the privilege.
posted by rikschell at 11:47 AM on December 4, 2024 [79 favorites]

hypothetically speaking, if Biden were Seal team Six-ing various CEOs on his way out

"Democrats should prove themselves the most politically conscious leaders in this war. Every Democrat must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'" -- J. Robinette Biden
posted by mittens at 11:47 AM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

> hypothetically speaking, if Biden were Seal team Six-ing various CEOs on his way out

Well, he's going to need to write a memo on how that was work related, so it passes the Supreme Court's test for immunity.
posted by atbash at 11:50 AM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

idk some people are just good at guns

Being "good at guns" is light years away from "being so blase about murdering someone in cold blood in front of a hotel during rush hour that you just saunter away onto a citibike and easily evade capture."
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:51 AM on December 4, 2024 [7 favorites]

Mod note: A note that the previous post on this topic was deleted because it was still a breaking news story, with not much information accessible to have a productive thread. This new thread is staying up because there has been more information released since the first post several hours ago. Please do remember to follow our participation guidelines and keep things focused on the news itself.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 11:51 AM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

I wasn't expecting 6 1/2 Avenue to make a cameo appearance. That alone makes this feel like something out of an espionage novel.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 11:53 AM on December 4, 2024 [6 favorites]

As someone posted on Bluesky:

Good work, 47. Now find an exit.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:54 AM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

Claim denial rates by insurance company:

Kaiser Permanente 7%
Oscar 12%
Ambetter 14%
Blue Cross Blue Shield 17%
Cigna 18%
Molina 19%
Aetna 20%
CareSource 20%
Anthem 23%
Medica 27%
UnitedHealthcare 32%

Based on available in-network claim data for plans sold on the marketplace.
posted by AlSweigart at 11:55 AM on December 4, 2024 [93 favorites]

this was a professional assassination. I don't think this was a jilted patient.

We had similar thoughts here. It's still too early for enough facts, but some possibilities:
a) A patient or family member who suffered a United denial, then hired a hit
b) A group of a's pooled their money, perhaps on darkweb
c) UnitedHealth denied a family coverage and said family had some, ah, enterprising members. As supercres put it, "some people are just good at guns."
d) Nothing to do with health care, but a personal matter, as praemunire noted: guy running afoul of a mob, say.
posted by doctornemo at 11:57 AM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

Good. Now let's bankrupt his family. Their sole recourse is through binding arbitration.
posted by stet at 11:59 AM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

I've been on Metafilter under one name or another since a few weeks before 9-11, and the gloating and cheering about this man's murder may be the lowest point in Metafilter history. I am truly ashamed.
posted by Modest House at 11:59 AM on December 4, 2024 [39 favorites]

being so blase about murdering someone in cold blood

googles “how many active combat veterans, for example, are in the united states and how many of them have been screwed over by their health insurance despite qualifying for VA medical care but compare that with how many of them are professional assassins”

the gloating and cheering about this man's murder may be the lowest point in Metafilter history

k i’ll do it enthusiastically enough for both of us
posted by supercres at 12:01 PM on December 4, 2024 [84 favorites]

I'm not! He was a terrible person with blood on his hands!
posted by Ferreous at 12:01 PM on December 4, 2024 [23 favorites]

I Care A Lot getting that much closer to documentary
posted by queensissy at 12:01 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

That CEO was no angel.

And we used to have courts to resolve disputes. Now we don't.
posted by stet at 12:02 PM on December 4, 2024 [41 favorites]

I've been on Metafilter under one name or another since a few weeks before 9-11, and the gloating and cheering about this man's murder may be the lowest point in Metafilter history. I am truly ashamed.

Some people are evil and their deaths are a net positive to the world, or at least not undeserved. Feelings of shame should not preclude recognizing that basic fact. This man, and the company he ran, are probably responsible for at least hundreds, of not thousands of innocent deaths.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:02 PM on December 4, 2024 [62 favorites]

Dude killed more people than any serial killer, he just did it through denial of claims
posted by Ferreous at 12:04 PM on December 4, 2024 [89 favorites]

At least this man got to see the Titanic before he died. Wait, what?
posted by rikschell at 12:04 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

As far as we know, the gunman is only responsible for one death.
posted by snofoam at 12:05 PM on December 4, 2024 [28 favorites]

"A man with a briefcase can kill more people than a man with a gun."
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:07 PM on December 4, 2024 [29 favorites]

The oddest part to me in the "pro or not" question is that he doesn't appear to be wearing gloves which seems like the most basic of basic precautions when committing crimes. Unless he's wearing white gloves? The video's not that great.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:08 PM on December 4, 2024

So there was another guy standing right there. It seems odd to shoot someone with someone else standing right there. I mean I guess you've got a gun so what are they going to do, but still.

Also, he didn't shoot him in the head. It seems like a professional hit would shoot someone in the head, not the leg and the back doesn't it? I'm wondering if the purpose of shooting someone in the leg and the back isn't to make sure they know you shot them? Tomake sure they hear you say something to them? You hit them in the femoral artery and they'll die but not right away?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:08 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

I too have been on MeFi for more than 20 years, and agree that the gloating and cheering about this man's murder may be the lowest point in Metafilter history. I usually expect the left-wing ghouls of this site to revel in the misery of others, but this is really despicable.
posted by davidmsc at 12:08 PM on December 4, 2024 [14 favorites]

the gloating and cheering about this man's murder may be the lowest point in Metafilter history

You must have been between accounts when Robert Novak died
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:10 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

Mod note: A few deleted. Reminder that comments celebrating death/violence/harm to others are not encouraged. Please refrain from making comments along those lines in the future.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 12:10 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

Taking bets that this was not a "professional hit" in the sense that there's no such thing as a career freelance hitman ala the video game hit man or movies The Killer or Collateral. There's like goofy weirdos who read soldier of fortune shit, and there's low life criminals who will take money to commit crimes but I don't think either of those types would have gone about it this way. And professional killers who work for intelligence agencies wouldn't kill this kind of guy. I'd be willing to bet the killer is more in the vein of the people who attempted to assassinate Trump over the summer, or the guy who murked Shinzo Abe - motivated amateurs with a grudge and/or a death wish.
posted by youthenrage at 12:14 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

Also, he didn't shoot him in the head. It seems like a professional hit would shoot someone in the head,

LEOs and military are trained to aim for the chest as it is the largest target. Heads are very easy to miss. It looks like he pops off a fourth shot once the CEO is on the ground, maybe that was a headshot? But a couple of shots through the chest, especially if they are hollowpoints, will almost completely ensure death.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:14 PM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

I think we're losing track of the real victim here, shareholder value.
posted by stet at 12:14 PM on December 4, 2024 [55 favorites]

It seems like a professional hit would shoot someone in the head, not the leg and the back doesn't it?

No. Real life isn't like the movies or video games, a head shot is actually pretty hard*. Militaries actually teach to aim for center of mass because it's just easier to reliably hit. The shooter shot him over and over again and even appeared to shoot again when the target was down. Seems pretty pro to me.

*This is why the "Trump faked the assassination attempt" ideas were so silly. You can't reliably fire just near someone's head like that to intentionally miss, that was a real headshot attempt. Or else Trump just absolutely doesn't give a fuck and was willing to gamble his life on faking the shot.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:14 PM on December 4, 2024 [16 favorites]

The whole thing is so weird. Like, Thompson had arrived early to set up for an investor event and entered a side door to the hotel. The gunman is reported to have been waiting there for ten minutes. How many people would have known Thompson's location, that Thompson would be arriving through that door at that particular time?

Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare but he has a boss -- Andrew Witty, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group. Thompson was in charge of the UHC line of business, but Witty's the more famous one, the one you see on TV. If Witty was scheduled to attend the event, wouldn't most assailants have targeted him instead?

It just makes it seem like a more personal thing.
posted by mochapickle at 12:16 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare but he has a boss -- Andrew Witty, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group

You have to grind at least 100 more hours before you're strong enough to take on the final boss.
posted by mittens at 12:17 PM on December 4, 2024 [22 favorites]

we're losing track of the real victim here, shareholder value

From what I've seen shares are up on otherwise mixed quarterly investor guidance, so even that may turn out to be positive for UHC.
posted by CrystalDave at 12:18 PM on December 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

Also willing to bet all the pearl clutchers that there were more gloating and cheering comments when Kissinger finally kicked it
posted by youthenrage at 12:18 PM on December 4, 2024 [20 favorites]

Honestly, I'm mostly surprised this doesn't happen more often. Workplace shootings, school shootings, random shootings - but this kind of thing is rare.
posted by McBearclaw at 12:19 PM on December 4, 2024 [14 favorites]

Sending along all the thoughts and prayers this CEO deserves.
posted by HVACDC_Bag at 12:21 PM on December 4, 2024 [20 favorites]

From what I've seen shares are up on otherwise mixed quarterly investor guidance, so even that may turn out to be positive for UHC.

It's going to come out that UHC had just implemented an AI system to advise on strategies to increase share value and this was its recomendation.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:21 PM on December 4, 2024 [31 favorites]

Honestly, I'm mostly surprised this doesn't happen more often. Workplace shootings, school shootings, random shootings - but this kind of thing is rare.

(looks at graph of shootings in America)

We'll get to this kind more often eventually, I am certain.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:21 PM on December 4, 2024 [6 favorites]

Blue Cross really picked an auspicious day to announce they weren't going to cover the cost of anaesthesia if the operation takes too long.

Speaking of which, Dr. Glaucomflecken just posted on that very topic.
posted by doctornemo at 12:22 PM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

From what I've seen shares are up on otherwise mixed quarterly investor guidance, so even that may turn out to be positive for UHC.

If it's better for the investors when CEOs die, they're legally obligated to kill themselves. It's just how corporate governance works.
posted by stet at 12:23 PM on December 4, 2024 [33 favorites]

UnitedHealthcare 32% - Based on available in-network claim data for plans sold on the marketplace.

In-network! IN-NETWORK claim denials! This is where you should rarely get denied, because that's how it's supposed to work -- they force you to stick to services in-network because that's where all the palms are greased to get things done! And they still deny care.
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:24 PM on December 4, 2024 [90 favorites]

"A man with a briefcase can kill more people than a man with a gun."

Reminds me of Pretty Boy Floyd by Woody Guthrie

"Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men
Some will rob you with a six-gun
And some with a fountain pen

And as through your life you travel
Yes, as through your life you roam
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home"
posted by SaltySalticid at 12:26 PM on December 4, 2024 [24 favorites]

Subsonic rounds would also be less likely to pass through the intended target and hit someone else, wouldn’t they?
posted by jamjam at 12:27 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

I usually expect the left-wing ghouls of this site to revel in the misery of others, but this is really despicable.

I would put down good money that there isn't all that much love for insurance executives on the right either and that plenty of MAGA "Real Americans" aren't shedding too many tears for this guy.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:27 PM on December 4, 2024 [16 favorites]

Lot of enthusiasm for (believed to be) political street murder from people who haven't lived in a world where it's commonplace. It's not a fun world, people.
posted by praemunire at 12:29 PM on December 4, 2024 [33 favorites]

been on Metafilter under one name or another since a few weeks before 9-11, and the gloating and cheering about this man's murder may be the lowest point in Metafilter history. I am truly ashamed.

Good, go again then. Stop telling other people how to feel and just comment on the news if that's what you want to do.
posted by ctmf at 12:29 PM on December 4, 2024 [22 favorites]

Would I have preferred that this guy was punished through legal means? Sure. We don't really have that, in part because the societal group he was a part of have arranged matters so that it's not possible. In fact they've made it very profitable to be an absolute garbage person. The chickens will eventually come home to roost, nevertheless, it seems.
posted by axiom at 12:31 PM on December 4, 2024 [22 favorites]

Ralph de la Torre is still a threat.
posted by mattgriffin at 12:32 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

It's not a fun world, people.

Neither is this one, that's why stuff like this happens and why there are cheers. And it's in large part thanks to guys like this.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:34 PM on December 4, 2024 [27 favorites]

While they're still looking for the suspect and their motivations, I would like to remind people of the strange case of Frank Cali, who was the acting boss of the Gambino crime family at the time of his assassination in 2019, the first NYC mob boss killed in over 30 years. Obviously, this was related to his extensive criminal activities, right? Nope. Apparently it was just a QAnon guy obsessed with QAnon conspiracy nonsense.
posted by mhum at 12:35 PM on December 4, 2024 [18 favorites]

Honestly expected that this was RDLT when somebody lit up my grouptext about a healthcare exec getting gunned down.
posted by youthenrage at 12:35 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

“Lot of enthusiasm for (believed to be) political street murder from people who haven't lived in a world where it's commonplace. It's not a fun world, people.”

Just like horror movies and video games, I think everyone in this thread has a grip on the difference between enjoying some schadenfreude and actually reckoning with the horror of daily street level chaos and murder. Kind of like what DirtyOldTown said at the beginning of the thread
posted by toodleydoodley at 12:35 PM on December 4, 2024 [15 favorites]

The election of Trump means almost no corporate criminal prosecutions at all unless they've donated too much money to Democrats, a la Martha Stewart.
posted by jamjam at 12:36 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

I feel like the lowest points in metafilter history were/are the rampant privilege-bro culture and appalling racism and transphobia but ok we all have our priorities; maybe this isn’t the thread for y’all.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:36 PM on December 4, 2024 [98 favorites]

I would put down good money that there isn't all that much love for insurance executives on the right either

Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of cheering for this from a wide range of people - there is no need to rail against "left-wing ghouls" - what's striking in the reaction is how shared it is - Americans can still unite!
posted by coffeecat at 12:37 PM on December 4, 2024 [24 favorites]

I completely understand how distressing it is to see the weakness of our democracy in the face of recent attacks on our most critical institutions. I share that distress. But I do think it's important to have perspective. We do, in fact, still have courts. We also have prosecutors who investigate and pursue white-collar crimes. We have regulators. And we have laws. We are not currently living in a society where the only recourse we have against powerful men who harm others is vigilante violence. Nor would that be desirable. The rule of law may not be working as it should, but it is not rotting in a grave either. I see nothing to celebrate here.
posted by prefpara at 12:38 PM on December 4, 2024 [6 favorites]

I'm not going to celebrate, but I can see why people would.

I don't endorse political killing, it doesn't lead anywhere good.

But?

You know that button people talk about in hypothetical situations? The one where you push it and you get a million dollars but a random stranger dies?

Thompson was pushing that button all day long.

I won't cheer his death, but its hard to condemn the killer because to me it looks a lot like self defense. Thompson was a mass murderer, a man who in a just world would be charged with crimes against humanity. I can't see the killing of any health industry executive as anything but self defense.

People engage in vigilantism when the machinery of justice has failed them. The proper solution is to improve the system of justice. If anyone had any hope that a man like Thompson would ever be brought to justice I doubt sanyone would have been so hurt by him they resorted to this.
posted by sotonohito at 12:39 PM on December 4, 2024 [155 favorites]

the people can have a little vigilantism, as a treat
posted by phunniemee at 12:41 PM on December 4, 2024 [69 favorites]

Just like horror movies and video games

This is completely unlike horror movies and video games because a real person was murdered in cold blood on the street. I won't judge people for how they feel about it, but that comparison is just nonsensical.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:42 PM on December 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

been on Metafilter under one name or another since a few weeks before 9-11, and the gloating and cheering about this man's murder may be the lowest point in Metafilter history. I am truly ashamed.


Do you also shame the French Revolutionaries whenever that country's revolutionary war comes up in conversation? It's people like this CEO and his ilk who have dragged us all down to a point in society where the 'Haves' live like kings and look down the the vast majority below them. Not a one of them would have any sympathy or horrified feelings if one of us were gunned down in the street, because to them we aren't even people anymore.

If we lived in a world where the 90% tax rate on the highest earners was still in place, a gentler, fairer and more equitable world...then yeah, this would have been a tragedy. But we don't, and it's not. It's karma.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 12:42 PM on December 4, 2024 [56 favorites]

It's not a fun world, people.

Cool man. You ever watch someone extract their own tooth with a pair of pliers because dental was too expensive for their boss (needlenose, fwiw)?
posted by stet at 12:42 PM on December 4, 2024 [65 favorites]

googles “how many active combat veterans, for example, are in the united states and how many of them have been screwed over by their health insurance despite qualifying for VA medical care but compare that with how many of them are professional assassins”

Yeah, I really don’t think anyone has begun to reckon yet with the issue of the literally hundreds of thousands of combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who have already been desensitized to killing. I know at least five people personally that the only reason I’m sure they didn’t do it is they hate New York.
posted by corb at 12:42 PM on December 4, 2024 [19 favorites]

Is this the second time this week I get to remind people that the WSPU sent a letter bomb to David Lloyd George and now I get to vote.
posted by phunniemee at 12:44 PM on December 4, 2024 [22 favorites]

'Tolerance is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others.'

We're supposed to have courts and justice and democracy as an alternative to heads on pointy sticks. But the very wealthy despise courts and justice and democracy and are making considerable strides in doing away with them, so here we are.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:45 PM on December 4, 2024 [38 favorites]

I wonder why it happened in New York. I was able to find the guy's house with just google and information in today's news articles. It's just a biggish house in a boring suburban cul-de-sac. I bet 100:1 that he drove himself to work on days he went in to the office.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:48 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

Just here to join the cheering as I try to figure out just exactly how much I owe the various collections agencies for that four month window last year when my health insurance got complicated. Oh, or maybe it's for the ER visit when I had good insurance. Oh and what about these 30 different bills for the relative I care for? They're all for the same visit but they're all slightly different and they'll all be heading to collections real soon too because I don't have 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, to devote to trying to get insurance to cover anything at all. FUCK HEALTH CARE EXECUTIVES AND BILLIONAIRES. BRING OUT THE GUILLOTINES. If we can't have single payer health care like the civilized countries than at least let these evil, evil vipers live in fear.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:48 PM on December 4, 2024 [65 favorites]

lfg
posted by slogger at 12:50 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

Also, this feels like dark wish fulfilment from people who want the American people to rise up and overthrow the current oppressors. I seriously doubt that the shooter was motivated by the concerns animating the discussion here. There is no violent revolution happening in the streets. Nor should we hope for one.
posted by prefpara at 12:50 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

Oh and I am going to steal another mefite's story and just gently mention an Alabama restaurant worker who got shot in the leg, extracted the bullet himself, put on some neosporin and some bandages and went to work that day. America fuck yeah!! We took the metal staples out of my son's head with needlenose pliers. You can cut a cast off with garden shears. THIS COUNTRY IS INSANE.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:51 PM on December 4, 2024 [81 favorites]

“This is completely unlike horror movies and video games because a real person was murdered in cold blood on the street. I won't judge people for how they feel about it, but that comparison is just nonsensical.”

This isn’t the first time you’ve misunderstood one of my comments. I was comparing people’s participation in a conversation to people’s enjoyment of horror movies and video games. Nobody wants any part of what these things signify (murder, death, dismemberment, horror, etc) in real life, but contained in the frame of conversation or storytelling, they can be cathartic.
posted by toodleydoodley at 12:52 PM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

mygothlaundry--- in 2017 I was on a crappy ACA plan because my employer decided to kill off our benefits. That was the year my wife needed surgery. Even though we were paying close to $2000 a month for insurance we ended up having to pay $30K out of pocket. My wife had been a stay-at-home mom but had to go find work with insurance which allowed us to chisel away that debt with the money we were paying towards our ACA/Romneycare/Heritage Foundation plan.
posted by drstrangelove at 12:52 PM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

I work for the CEO of a health clinic and my boss commented on that this morning and I am staying verrrrrrrrrrrry quiet especially since I don't even have damn insurance yet and I'm going to be quitting within the next 30 minutes so I won't anyway wheee
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:53 PM on December 4, 2024 [51 favorites]

Maybe you are a “they go low we go high” person and that’s fine for you, but a lot of us have lost p̶a̶t̶i̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ patients.

FTFY
posted by thivaia at 12:53 PM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

I don't understand the notions that this is somehow political or vigilantism or a revolutionary act. I'd wager UHC denied healthcare for someone's family member, that person died, and the survivors went broke. That's fully legal, and our newly-elected governing party thinks that the insurance companies should be allowed to do MORE of that. My money's on revenge.
posted by McBearclaw at 12:54 PM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

You guys, a man is dead! I mean, he's not yet, but he will be when the cops find him.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:54 PM on December 4, 2024 [24 favorites]

But I do think it's important to have perspective. We do, in fact, still have courts. We also have prosecutors who investigate and pursue white-collar crimes. We have regulators. And we have laws. We are not currently living in a society where the only recourse we have against powerful men who harm others is vigilante violence.

Are we? How many millions of lives were wrecked by the shenanigans that led to the 2008 financial crisis? How many of those responsible were punished? Oh right, I forgot WELL AKSHUALLY THEY DIDNT BREAK ANY LAWS SO. How many hundreds of thousands of people suffered or died due to the actions of the Sackler family, who are now wrangling in court over whether they will remain astronomically wealthy or merely extremely wealthy. How many people have this executive's decisions personally bankrupted, harmed, or killed? And all completely legally!

Nah, fuck that. I'm not going to pretend: I'm glad and I'm cheering. I'm not going to personally go out and do anything because I'm a coward but I'm not going to pretend that this isn't a good thing. There were some recent threads about Vietnam and China executing criminal billionaires. Good.

In any case, the Buddha candidates clutching their pearls in this thread are getting it backwards: you're dismayed at a world where people would cheer things like this? Be appalled at the people who got us here.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:54 PM on December 4, 2024 [105 favorites]

UHC's stock price apparently went up; makes sense, since they won't have to pay him anymore.
posted by Melismata at 12:57 PM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

Look I'd like to feel bad for someone who made a very good living off the misery of others, but they unfortunately did not sign up for my Tears For Profiteers Program despite being quite capable of paying the monthly enrollment fees and related deductibles. If I were to be sympathetic now, for free, what sort of message would that send? You'd have rich scumbags everywhere with their hands out, expecting to be treated like humans, with zero incentive to not be shit. Maybe there needs to be a discussion about personal choices and responsibility, so that the next time one of them is gunned down in the street like a dog my first thought isn't "Hunh, I thought New York was going to stop leaving its garbage on the sidewalks".
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:57 PM on December 4, 2024 [70 favorites]

Why are we supposed to root for Batman but not this guy?
posted by rikschell at 1:03 PM on December 4, 2024 [7 favorites]

People can feel however they want about this, but it bums me out because it fixes nothing. Revenge is just an outlet. It's pointless at best and harmful at worst. Fix shit.

Batman is a billionaire so we should be cheering the dude shooting Batman, which means we should be lionizing the Joker, which-- wait a minute!
posted by phooky at 1:05 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

I'm glad that we're not condoning murder in general here, just applauding specific murders.

One man's grave is another man or woman's ballroom.
posted by y2karl at 1:07 PM on December 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

I think the whole superhero thing is nonsense leaning towards fascism, but if we are supposed to cheer for extrajudicial justice, then yeah.
posted by rikschell at 1:08 PM on December 4, 2024

Do you also shame the French Revolutionaries whenever that country's revolutionary war comes up in conversation?

I think the leaders of the French Revolution are generally agreed to have been horrible. It's literally called the "Reign of Terror".
posted by mr_roboto at 1:10 PM on December 4, 2024 [16 favorites]

I wonder why it happened in New York. I was able to find the guy's house with just google and information in today's news articles.

Easier to get away and disappear? The guy clearly doesn't want to get caught.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:12 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

Its a real life Who Shot Mr. Burns!
posted by East14thTaco at 1:13 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

Honestly, I'm mostly surprised this doesn't happen more often. Workplace shootings, school shootings, random shootings - but this kind of thing is rare.

This often surprises me but in general it takes a lot to get people to kill other people. Even in war. Still if you've got no family and your insurance company just denied your cancer treatment . . .

Man, I don't like insurance companies or CEOs at all, but when systems start to destablize into assassinations that's rarely good on the whole for society.

When you look back you see cycles all over the place where violence is the end result of wealth disparities. Sometimes the wealthly throttle back the excesses but usually its a more direct wealth redistribution. That's when the guillotines come out.

Read somewhere that C-Suites and upper management should be forced onto their company's (ie rapacity vampire squid parasite) worst plans. Fuck yea.

It's meaningless unless you are somehow going to prevent them from paying out of pocket and or buying their own coverage. And you'd have to make the claims system anonymous 'cause just the CEOs is going to put a thumb on the scale.

Stochastic terrorism isn’t just for the right wing anymore?

Is there any indication at all of the political leanings in the motive? Right wing people get cancer too.


posted by Mitheral at 1:14 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

the people at zero hedge, those maga and even worse website commenters, seem to be just as approving as people here - why, they're even making the same comments and jokes

reddit, too

it's like the right wing and the left wing are becoming fun house mirrors of one another
posted by pyramid termite at 1:15 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

To tie two subcurrents of this discussion together, there is an Elseworlds from 1999 called Batman: Reign of Terror where Bruce Wayne is the son of a French nobleman who becomes a captain in the Revolutionary Army but ends up having to save nobles from the evil he Committee of Public Safety. Quite bizarre.
posted by star gentle uterus at 1:17 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

it's like the right wing and the left wing are becoming fun house mirrors of one another

Or maybe, just maybe, being a health insurance company executive is objectively an immoral, anti-social job to have, and the more zealous folks of all political stripes recognize that.
posted by tclark at 1:18 PM on December 4, 2024 [62 favorites]

I read this story this morning before I realized it was related to this killing. (Not sure if anyone linked to it above.) UnitedHealth wanted to deny this young man's coverage because the meds were too expensive. They were prepared to lie and scam and just let him die rather than pay out the claims, and nobody at UnitedHealth seemed bothered by that.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 1:20 PM on December 4, 2024 [52 favorites]

One man's grave is another man or woman's ballroom.

So that’s the reason so much traditional Irish Dancing is all in place instead of moving around in the available space!

I have wondered about that for so many years!
posted by jamjam at 1:20 PM on December 4, 2024 [19 favorites]

It's almost like EVERYBODY HATES THESE EVIL FUCKS WHO HOLD A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF POWER OVER ALL OF US USIANS REGARDLESS OF POLITICAL AFFILIATION and it would be broadly popular to get rid of them (one way or the other). Is there any organized group or political party that intends to make this kind of BROADLY POPULAR change or ???
posted by youthenrage at 1:22 PM on December 4, 2024 [15 favorites]

crypto mining supply store

What the fuck do they sell at a crypto mining supply store? Buckets of electrons and boxes of random numbers?
posted by Mitheral at 1:23 PM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

What the fuck do they sell at a crypto mining supply store? Buckets of electrons and boxes of random numbers?

An employee named Jerry is writing seed phrases in the back. $20 a pop.

Back to the topic, it would be a shame if every denial of coverage was responded to with a newspaper clipping of this event with the denial letter mailed back to corporate. En masse.
posted by ryoshu at 1:26 PM on December 4, 2024 [15 favorites]

Its also pretty wild that it's 2:30 mountain time and I'm still telling people East of me that this happened. My mom was iin Manhattan and didn't know (because she was having her leg x-rayed, heh).

Its almost like breathless reporting about a bunch of dead kids is great copy but giving someone who whacks a CEO would be giving a heinous crime "too much attwntion."
posted by East14thTaco at 1:28 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

It's currently the lead story on every national news site I checked. Who's not giving it attention?
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:32 PM on December 4, 2024 [6 favorites]

What the fuck do they sell at a crypto mining supply store?

Computers/servers built specifically to mine for crypto.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:32 PM on December 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

Oh and I am going to steal another mefite's story and just gently mention an Alabama restaurant worker who got shot in the leg, extracted the bullet himself, put on some neosporin and some bandages and went to work that day. America fuck yeah!! We took the metal staples out of my son's head with needlenose pliers. You can cut a cast off with garden shears. THIS COUNTRY IS INSANE.

Absolutely not game to try this on myself (but this guy is), but oscillating saws like those sold by Dremel and Dewalt are the consumer version of what's used in hospitals to remove casts.

But also... it's insane thats somebody has to consider making this a DIY job.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 1:34 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

Pity no one will get to eat him, last chance at a first good act.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:40 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

There was a memorial interlude at the CVS all hands meeting today, which was weird.

But don’t worry guys our CEO thinks we can avoid any last minute legislation restricting PBMs so still a lot of reason to be positive.
posted by jeoc at 1:43 PM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

You're all gonna feel real bad when it turns out he was visited by three ghosts of medical malfeasance last night and was on his way to the investor's conference with a hastily rewritten speech.
posted by lucidium at 1:44 PM on December 4, 2024 [69 favorites]

Absolutely not game to try this on myself (but this guy is yt ), but oscillating saw like those sold by Dremel and Dewalt are the consumer version of what's used in hospitals to remove casts.

Do you think that the quality of tool is the issue with self-surgery under financial duress?
posted by stet at 1:44 PM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

I think the leaders of the French Revolution are generally agreed to have been horrible. It's literally called the "Reign of Terror".

“There were two ‘Reigns of Terror,’ if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the ‘horrors’ of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”
—Mark Twain

posted by adrienneleigh at 1:48 PM on December 4, 2024 [163 favorites]

@sonuvafitch.bsky.social‬: UnitedHealthcare backing up a dump truck full of denied claims at the police station as possible suspects
cop: uhhhh wow this is a lot
UnitedHealthcare: this is just 2024
posted by Wordshore at 1:49 PM on December 4, 2024 [44 favorites]

I first heard this at work and to laugh as the number of people harmed by UHC is astronomical. The likelihood that is a hit from a family or patient is high. Unfortunately he will get replace by another ghoul and I will have to continue to waste my time with pointless paper work. I’m sorry for his family, but that is about it. His death was quick unlike those affected by his companies decisions and he never had to deal with consequences of his actions.
posted by roguewraith at 1:49 PM on December 4, 2024 [22 favorites]

Healthcare in the U.S. is such an utter shitshow that the only thing I find even remotely surprising about the assassination of a health insurance CEO is that it hasn't happened before.
posted by johnofjack at 1:50 PM on December 4, 2024 [25 favorites]

Do you think that the quality of tool is the issue with self-surgery under financial duress?

Nope, more like I'd be afraid the consumer version has a slightly larger oscillation arc and that would be enough to start tearing through skin.

Posted this because I thought this was an interesting tidbit of information. And also, a warning for any budding DIY cast escaper..... oscillating saws are not the same as reciprocating saws.

When I was a kid I broke my arm, had a cast and still remember the sheer terror I felt when I saw the oscillating saw that was about to cut my cast, the tech has to use it on himself to get me to calm down and accept that it wouldn't cut me.,
posted by WaterAndPixels at 1:51 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

Pity no one will get to eat him, last chance at a first good act.

Soylent Green is Brian Thompson?
I won't have what she's having.
posted by y2karl at 1:54 PM on December 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

Some of you need to just take note of how many people are genuinely excited to see a CEO of a private health insurer get murdered and think about why that might be and perhaps stretch your imagination beyond "monsters!". If literally the only conclusion you come up with is "ugh, disturbing! The left, the right - truly the horseshoe is real" I am sorry but you have zero political literacy and are unqualified to ever talk about "leftists" "MAGA" or anything of the sort. Go read Chris Cillizza or something.
posted by windbox at 1:57 PM on December 4, 2024 [45 favorites]

Just popping in to say that "A furious manhunt" would make a fine username
posted by chavenet at 1:58 PM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

Recent roundup of updates

- The police do not think the shooter is a professional because he made "too many mistakes" such as shooting from too far away
- They found a water bottle and a gum wrapper where the shooter had been waiting, they are testing those -- and a cell phone, too
- The shooter had been waiting for about five minutes before Thompson arrived
- The shooter left on an ebike that was connected to GPS tracking (do they mean a citibike?)
- Thompson had not been staying at that hotel

Also, photos -- the backpack is unusual.
posted by mochapickle at 1:59 PM on December 4, 2024 [14 favorites]

yeah, it's almost like insurance companies and by extension their executives are so completely vile that even maga chuds find them contemptible. wait no, it's definitely that the right and the left are the same, that adds up, time to turn on npr and feel smug.
posted by Ferreous at 2:02 PM on December 4, 2024 [26 favorites]

it's weird that it was either single action or some kind of crap slide that required constant re-cocking. (makes me think it's a homemade weapon)

I'm not a gun guy but it looked almost like a welrod to me?

Which is to say a very stereotypical ww2 spy gun.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:03 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

on a lighter note, I'm glad they didn't get Brian "Face Muscles" Thompson instead.
posted by Ferreous at 2:05 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

Lmao that the nypd give a shit about investigating anything instead of playing candy crush and terrorizing people for reporting their illegal parking
posted by knobknosher at 2:05 PM on December 4, 2024 [22 favorites]

the backpack is unusual.

Peak Design ?
posted by 1970s Antihero at 2:07 PM on December 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

do they mean a citibike?

Yeah - that's the most wild part about this to me - escaped by Citi bike - a product that tracks its users.
posted by coffeecat at 2:07 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

Yeah - that's the most wild part about this to me - escaped by Citi bike - a product that tracks its users

Shepherd said the same thing: "You have to make an account for those kinds of bikes." (He uses the Tangerine ones in Toronto from time to time.)
posted by Kitteh at 2:11 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

Brian Thompson had far more blood on his hands than his assassin does. Just saying. My sympathy is with the families of those he killed through his callous cruelty and quest for higher quarter-over-quarter profits.
posted by SansPoint at 2:14 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

Also: They have since recovered the bike. So that'll be another thing to test. But yeah, even if it's a stolen account, there'll be GPS info on where it was picked up, and certainly no shortage of surveillance in midtown where there are banks etc. on every corner.
posted by mochapickle at 2:15 PM on December 4, 2024

You ever watch someone extract their own tooth with a pair of pliers because dental was too expensive for their boss (needlenose, fwiw)?

I see people on the street with some frequency with horrible untreated wounds and chronic conditions, due at least in part to our shitty health care systems.

I just initially trained as a historian of a period where the rule of law was not firmly established and have continued to take an interest in other such periods; also I pay attention to contemporary news about countries in which such violence is common, and, yes, I actually think that world is a lot less pleasant to live in than ours, and I think you need to be pretty simple-minded not to agree.

I won't even get into whether it's usually shitty to be enthusiastic about someone's death (and none of you enthusiasts could've told me his name yesterday), because that's a question of moral capacity. This is simply self-interest. (And, just to save myself some silly comments, basically my entire job is, and has been for years, pursuing various forms of corporate accountability. I know more about unconscionable corporate behavior than probably 90% of the people reading this. I simply prefer to reserve my morally repugnant behavior for when it can reasonably be expected to achieve a truly desirable end.)
posted by praemunire at 2:21 PM on December 4, 2024 [27 favorites]

My guess is the national media will completely ignore how vile of a company UnitedHealth actually is; NOT do a deep dive into the impacts on patients lives (and deaths) from its heinous 'policies'; or a consideration of why we in the US have such an awful healthcare system seemingly set as its primary (only) purpose the enrichment of parasitical insurance companies and the management running same; or whether exceeding the staggering inequality of the Ancien Regime is ethically justifiable (its not, obv, but lets see the NYT tell us why it is).

Pretty much the oligarchic supporting media will just be doing the 'manhunt' stories followed by hagiographies of the killed person. Ive seen the word "veteran" in all the headlines of stories I've managed to scam.

IMO nothing is going to change the course we are on for so many deeply complex reasons. And our 'side' basically has given up, our leaders are too pathetic to fight, and the only recourse we have is to create and sustain local collaborative organizations trying to support and defend the vulnerable.

The bad guys have won. They wont stop till they take everything and rule our lives with an iron fist. Some of us will just keep our heads down try to do some good things without becoming targets ourselves. Some of us will be incredibly brave and actually fight back, but get the anti-genocide kids on campus treatment x 1000. Most of us will just muddle along.

Nothing will stop the slope we are on, without a catastrophe (or series of them), climate nightmare, international disasters, giant famines, civil war, international war. Those might cause change, but the suffering will be so vast. And the change could be worse than the cause.

Sorry to be so bleak. But some of us in high income countries have been in such a bubble of safety and plenty (sort of, definitely compared to our brothers and sisters in low and moderate income countries) that we are in denial of what is likely coming to humanity - my guess, we're in the 1920s, and the 30s and 40s are coming.

Fuck I need to get off the internet. Best to all of you.
posted by WatTylerJr at 2:21 PM on December 4, 2024 [40 favorites]

I'm just imagining several dozen CCTV operators, bike gps admins, bystanders with phones, Starbucks barista who wrote "Virglannie Kyler" on the side of his mochaccino cup this morning, all sadly shaking their heads and throwing up their hands like gosh it's the weirdest thing, that info is just missing! Because they have all tried to use healthcare in this country, too.
posted by phunniemee at 2:22 PM on December 4, 2024 [24 favorites]

"People like that... corporations like that... they have all the money, they have all the power, and they use it to make people like you go away. Right now, you're suffering under an enormous weight. We provide... leverage."
posted by rikschell at 2:23 PM on December 4, 2024 [16 favorites]

(The bike could well have been stolen. Citibikes get stolen pretty readily. Just before the pandemic, I threw out my back helping a homeless guy who, high as a kite, had run his clearly stolen bike top speed into a light pole. His main concern was not whether he needed to go to the hospital but whether he was going to lose the bike in the confusion and/or arrival of any first responders.)
posted by praemunire at 2:24 PM on December 4, 2024 [7 favorites]

escaped by Citi bike - a product that tracks its users.

Some guy named Riley on Twitter: "I happen to continuously scrape Citibike data every minute, so I can see where individual bikes go. ... Bike #421-6511 left the dock at 54 St & 6 Ave at 6:44 AM, and was docked at 6:52 AM at Madison Ave & 82nd St. This is the *only* bike that left within 10 minutes of the shooting and headed northbound." (He notes that Citibike will likely have more detailed info.)
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:25 PM on December 4, 2024 [12 favorites]

Riley sounds like a snitch
posted by catcafe at 2:35 PM on December 4, 2024 [78 favorites]

/I've been on Metafilter under one name or another since a few weeks before 9-11, and the gloating and cheering about this man's murder may be the lowest point in Metafilter history. I am truly ashamed.

Concur - this won't affect the practices of the health insurance industry one bit. Even if it did, the overall tone of this thread suggests people here want to live in a society where targeted murder is used as a solution to social ills, which just doesn't feel right to me.

If it makes me a monster to believe that we should strive to live in a society where corporate harms are addressed through law and democracy, and not extrajudicial killings, that's the kind of monster I'll happily be.
posted by LSK at 2:41 PM on December 4, 2024 [15 favorites]

Wait, so the shooter actually grabbed a citibike from a dock? Instead of having one leaning against a building somewhere? There are so many ways that could have gone wrong.

Can you even go 30 blocks in eight minutes?
posted by mochapickle at 2:41 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: if you're not cool with some rando gunning down someone you don't like, you're a pearl-clutching snitch-loving loser.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:43 PM on December 4, 2024 [7 favorites]

Concur - this won't affect the practices of the health insurance industry one bit.

Well not after just one.
posted by corb at 2:47 PM on December 4, 2024 [76 favorites]

I think the thing here is that he's not just "someone we don't like" he's a dude who made millions killing people via denial of coverage.
posted by Ferreous at 2:48 PM on December 4, 2024 [63 favorites]

>certainly no shortage of surveillance in midtown where there are banks etc. on every corner.

Given that Manhattan is a totalitarian surveillance state of a meager 22.82 square miles, it's astonishing that the perp hasn't been smoked out at this point. After all, he's currently the subject of the largest manhunt in the nation.

How many bushes on this small island are there available to conceal oneself behind?
posted by Gordion Knott at 2:49 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

NBC News reporting that Thompson had been receiving threats recently, but did not have a security detail. (UHG executives don't have them provided, per company policy.)

Per an NBC interview with Thompson's wife, Paulette: "Yes, there had been some threats [...] Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.”
posted by mochapickle at 2:53 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

How many bushes on this small island are there available to conceal oneself behind?

Look, I'm not saying I'd abet the guy, but if I saw a bush in my yard wiggle suspiciously today? No I didn't .
posted by phunniemee at 2:55 PM on December 4, 2024 [24 favorites]

Gordion Knott: If he got into Central Park, he could very easily escape detection long enough to change clothes and fade into the background. There's a lot of secluded, wooded areas in there where one could easily hide undetected for a while especially at 7 in the morning.
posted by SansPoint at 2:56 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

How many bushes on this small island are there available to conceal oneself behind?

For full surveillance coverage you need the PPO (personal privacy optional) plan which is an extra $1000/month. Since you haven't paid for that coverage the best we can do is a thought (standard coverage with a 20% copay for footage). Prayers are out-of-network, but will be added to your OOP deductible of get & f*cked.

Shareholder value increased 1.83% based on this incident. The algorithm will adjust accordingly.
posted by ryoshu at 2:56 PM on December 4, 2024 [16 favorites]

>Can you even go 30 blocks in eight minutes?

It's only a bit over a mile and a half. At that hour when traffic is still relatively light it would be pretty easy on any bike to do that at moderate speed without stopping for lights, but especially so on an electric.
posted by theory at 2:59 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

Thompson had been receiving threats recently, but did not have a security detail

That's stunning to me. I work for a utility; our CEOs have had bodyguards for years. These days, I thought it was basically a requirement for (amusingly) insurance. (Among other reasons, kidnapping CEOs is seen as a fairly lucrative line of business in some quarters.)
posted by nickmark at 3:00 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

> mochapickle: "Can you even go 30 blocks in eight minutes?"

Fwiw, Google Maps suggests that it takes 11 minutes to bike from W 54th & 6th Ave to E 82nd & Madison.
posted by mhum at 3:01 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

>There's a lot of secluded, wooded areas in there where one could easily hide undetected for a while especially at 7 in the morning.

The most secluded area is probably the Ramble, but it's a favorite among birdwatchers, and anyway the leaves are down. Maybe he snuck into a stall in one of the public bathrooms and changed clothing in there, possibly by switching the liner of his jacket to the outside in the manner of Ethan Hunt?
posted by Gordion Knott at 3:02 PM on December 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

That's stunning to me. I work for a utility; our CEOs have had bodyguards for years. These days, I thought it was basically a requirement for (amusingly) insurance. (Among other reasons, kidnapping CEOs is seen as a fairly lucrative line of business in some quarters.)

I was surprised as well. According to that NBC article I linked, Humana and Cigna both provide security to executives. CVS (Aetna is part of CVS) insists its CEO uses a corporate aircraft and a corporate driver.
posted by mochapickle at 3:10 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

If it makes me a monster to believe that we should strive to live in a society where corporate harms are addressed through law and democracy, and not extrajudicial killings, that's the kind of monster I'll happily be.

I don't think most of us would argue that we SHOULD live in that kind of society. But most of us recognize that we DON'T and that no matter what we as individuals advocate for, we are up against a corrupt system where the billionaire CEOs get a different set of rules than the rest of us. He could kill with impunity without fear of punishment, all so his company could make more money. If you are siding with him and his ilk over the people his company kills, then yes, you are a monster (but I think you're just missing the framing other people are doing).
posted by rikschell at 3:10 PM on December 4, 2024 [30 favorites]

Per an NBC interview with Thompson's wife, Paulette: "Yes, there had been some threats [...] Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.”

Honestly, I assume this was a medical practice of some kind that lost business with UHC, possibly due to fraud or other organized crime connections. There's ample amounts of fraud in the health care sector. Take this example from this year:

The Justice Department today announced the 2024 National Health Care Fraud Enforcement Action, which resulted in criminal charges against 193 defendants, including 76 doctors, nurse practitioners, and other licensed medical professionals in 32 federal districts across the United States, for their alleged participation in various health care fraud schemes involving approximately $2.75 billion in intended losses and $1.6 billion in actual losses.

There's so much of it they have to bundle them into annual "Actions."
posted by pwnguin at 3:11 PM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

I've been on Metafilter under one name or another since a few weeks before 9-11, and the gloating and cheering about this man's murder may be the lowest point in Metafilter history. I am truly ashamed.

Might be worth reflecting on why we have reached what you deem the lowest point in Metafilter history. As another recent thread states: "The War on Poverty Is Over. Rich People Won." Virtually every mechanism for social justice in the United States has been corrupted. We're supposed to mourn some rich fuck's demise while women are dying and an entire political party is breaking out the champagne. Our new leader is rubbing his greasy little hands at the prospect of separating millions of families and tossing refugees out into the desert. A rich sociopath whose fortune is verging on a half trillion dollars gorges on the government tit while people on Social Security and Medicaid are being targeted as the next freeloaders to pay for oligarch tax cuts. Meanwhile we have endless billions to assist genocidal regimes abroad. People in despair are overdosing on fentanyl, and drinking themselves to death in increasing numbers.

It's worth asking, how do we restore balance to society? We've tried peace. Over and over. Every peaceful protest results in such a pushback that we wind up worse off than before we even started. It seems there's no way to win. So maybe people are cheering because everyone has been reminded that these untouchable demigods aren't immortal and impervious after all.
posted by xigxag at 3:15 PM on December 4, 2024 [106 favorites]

Isn't this most likely someone who lost a close relative due to care being denied by UnitedHealthcare?

It'll become an interesting trial though if the shooter himself winds up being someone who UnitedHealthcare have effectively killed, like maybe some cancer patient whose treatement they turnned down.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:17 PM on December 4, 2024 [6 favorites]

Mod note: One comment removed. Let's avoid bringing up grudges from over a decade ago to justify belittling another community member.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 3:22 PM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

The only belittling that will be tolerated is of the tsk tsk moralizing variety, of course.
posted by sinfony at 3:28 PM on December 4, 2024 [24 favorites]

"...send not to know for whom the bell tolls
It tolls for thee"...John Donne
posted by Czjewel at 3:37 PM on December 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

Pearl clutching has always been a pre-existing condition here.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:38 PM on December 4, 2024 [24 favorites]

I think DB Cooper did this hit.
posted by whatevernot at 3:39 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

Isn't this most likely someone who lost a close relative due to care being denied by UnitedHealthcare?

Who knows really? There were two assassination attempts against The Orange Man this year, and neither were by left-leaning people. It's just best not to make assumptions of motive.

If it makes me a monster to believe that we should strive to live in a society where corporate harms are addressed through law and democracy, and not extrajudicial killings, that's the kind of monster I'll happily be.

I am not shedding any tears over this specific person, but I do understand where you're coming from, and I really think most of us do too. It's really bad if this is the only hope for societal justice we have, and not the least reason for that is it could be applied against the side of real justice just as well as for it, and the bad guys have both more resources for violence and fewer qualms about using it.
posted by JHarris at 3:39 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

Folks, no one is suggesting we volunteer as pall bearers. I'm just saying that first, we don't actually know what motivated this shooter, and second, even if the shooter was motivated by a very understandable rage at the machine etc., we should not welcome extrajudicial violence, which is not going to patch any of the holes in the American safety net.

I actually do think there is a place for the threat of violence in political protest. But not in the form of stochastic terrorism, which is not any better for society when it is aimed at someone we find disgusting. These are bad means and they lead to bad ends.
posted by prefpara at 3:40 PM on December 4, 2024 [7 favorites]

In the deleted thread I said I’m part of the problem because I used to work for an insurance company.

I worked in the department that set up businesses with new policies and there is plenty of blame to go around as to why insurance is so bad for so many people. Yes I blame employers too. People’s personal biases and preferences shouldn’t determine their employees’ insurance policies but it happens all the time.

We were so disconnected from the CEO, there were certain situations where lil ole me had the authority to not even offer a business a plan in the first place.

It’s such a flawed ecosystem that supports millions of jobs. I don’t know how we get out of it.
posted by girlmightlive at 3:41 PM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

From the ABC linkThe police do not think the shooter is a professional because he made "too many mistakes" such as shooting from too far away sources said.

It is self evident the shooter wasn't too far away. His target is dead and the shooter hasn't yet been caught. The sources should be discounted as reliable.
posted by Mitheral at 3:41 PM on December 4, 2024 [20 favorites]

Coincidentally, I read this yesterday, about pre-Revolutionary assassinations in Russia:

"Gradually, though, it became clear that the original logic of the 'blow at the centre' was flawed. Tsar followed assassinated tsar, and the supply of candidates to become chief of police showed no sign of drying up, however often they were attacked."

posted by clawsoon at 3:45 PM on December 4, 2024 [14 favorites]

Obviously, no one knows why this person was shot, so we're just filling in the vacuum with suppositions about jilted policyholders conspiring to hire a hitman on the dark web, which is good thriller material but probably not likely. Despite what the police are saying to the media, it seems clear is that the killer was calm and relatively prepared for contingencies, which indicates a level of skill that requires training or at least prior experience.

For all we know, the CEO could have had unpaid gambling debts or otherwise crossed people more powerful than him, which is a possibility in the circles he ran in. Perhaps some of the bitcoin going to Russian ransomware criminals was diverted; it sounds like the ransomware wasn't entirely removed and some hospital systems remained afflicted, as a result. Who knows? At least this isn't being pushed in the media as a Russian-style suicide-by-defenestration.

So maybe people are cheering because everyone has been reminded that these untouchable demigods aren't immortal and impervious after all.

Probably this.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:46 PM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

we should not welcome extrajudicial violence, which is not going to patch any of the holes in the American safety net.

I don’t welcome violence, but I am at a loss for how we fix things in this country. I have been voting in every local and national election f for decades. I got to community member and am involved in non-profits. I have done door knocking, written my electeds…

And based on the last election it seems like lots of people have given up on voting or actively believe that a felon billionaire is somehow going to make their lives better, or at least the lives of other people they don’t like worse.
posted by CostcoCultist at 3:48 PM on December 4, 2024 [23 favorites]

Morbidly, this is somewhat fascinating because... I looked at the photos the police released and that could be any white guy with a nose and a grey backpack? How do I know I wasn't in Manhattan this morning? If he stole the bike, used a burner phone, wore gloves, got to Central Park, changed clothes and had a plane ticket? At that point maybe it was D.B. Cooper.

Honestly, though my gut reaction was "yay, bad guy dies," after the attempts on Tr**p, it seems like the acceleration into darkness and disorder is well on its way.

I really didn't want to buy a gun, America. Goddammit.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 3:50 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

we don't actually know what motivated this shooter

I don't know the motivation of the guy who cleans my local streets but I can still be happy he's out there cleaning.
posted by biffa at 3:52 PM on December 4, 2024 [36 favorites]

Isn't this most likely someone who lost a close relative due to care being denied by UnitedHealthcare?

Why would we need additional links or information when we hav so many super sleuths right here?
posted by Wood at 3:54 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

if only the shooter had lied on his firearm forms, he would have been in jail already
posted by chavenet at 3:57 PM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

Security details: I expect the top execs at BlueCross, Cigna, etc. will enjoy expanded details tonight.
posted by doctornemo at 4:03 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

> jeffburdges: "Isn't this most likely someone who lost a close relative due to care being denied by UnitedHealthcare?"

Once again, I would like to point out that the most likely sort of person to have killed former Gambino boss Frank Cali would be someone heavily involved in crime, organized or otherwise. But, as it happens, it was just some QAnon guy who was later found to be mentally unfit to stand trial. Things that are less likely than the most likely thing do still happen.
posted by mhum at 4:04 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

It's the potential "silencer" bit that gets me. Can you go into a gun store and buy a silencer? Not a gun person, so don't know.

And shooter may have made mistakes, but hasn't been caught yet, so did something right it seems. The tracking of the bike will give clues. They will probably be able to trace the phone he rented it from.
posted by Windopaene at 4:05 PM on December 4, 2024

Mod note: One comment removed. Commentary about moderator decisions doesn't go in the thread it, so please keep those comments to email or MetaTalk, thank you!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:06 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

extrajudicial killings

But enough about capitalism

Anyway, there’s nothing inherently moral about “law” or the “judiciary”. The rule of law has a real spotty history. Overall, I’m not buying it

(The US has always had unjust killings.)
posted by knobknosher at 4:06 PM on December 4, 2024 [12 favorites]

Folks, no one is suggesting we volunteer as pall bearers. I'm just saying that first, we don't actually know what motivated this shooter

Ha ha ha, yeah, we do, man!!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:07 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

I personally cannot volunteer as pallbearer because I have an injury that never healed right. Two guesses as to why
posted by knobknosher at 4:09 PM on December 4, 2024 [34 favorites]

It's the potential "silencer" bit that gets me. Can you go into a gun store and buy a silencer? Not a gun person, so don't know.

You can buy one online - just gotta go through the proper steps, which includes registration with the ATF. Or you can make one if the desire is for lack of traceability and you don't care about long term usage.

There's a reason I stopped shooting a while back - shit's so whacky in that world and it's all scary politics and fear.
posted by drewbage1847 at 4:11 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

You know what really bothers me? The PD immediately put out a $10k reward. First of all, if this had been you or me getting shot, would there be a $10k reward? And second, ten thousand dollars is a lot of money to the person who turns this guy in, but is it an amount of money the man who got shot would even have gotten out of bed for? You see what I'm saying? Even in death, he's benefitting from economic disparity.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:11 PM on December 4, 2024 [60 favorites]

$10K is an investment. NYC has a lot to lose in tourism if a high-profile executive gets gunned down in the street outside his hotel and they never find the killer.
posted by mochapickle at 4:15 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

$10k seems kinda cheap to me, maybe they're not that bothered

Or the economy really is shit!
posted by SystematicAbuse at 4:16 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

I too have been on MeFi for more than 20 years, and agree that the gloating and cheering about this man's murder may be the lowest point in Metafilter history. I usually expect the left-wing ghouls of this site to revel in the misery of others, but this is really despicable.

Yeah, but let's be fair, you usually only speak up when you see an opportunity to troll "leftists". Every single one of us is more than familiar with the way things go on rightwing forums, the only difference is, your guys cheer the slaughter of the weak and ours cheer the slaughter of the strong.

I do actually believe that cheering any murder is gross, but if I have to pick a side, I'm picking this one. If anyone bears any responsibility for pushing society closer and closer to the brink of chaos, where things like this will happen more and more frequently, it's this guy and his ilk. He literally kills people to enhance shareholder value. What the fuck do you expect?
posted by klanawa at 4:23 PM on December 4, 2024 [77 favorites]

Yes. If you look at the FRED graph for rewards for murdered CEOs it's been flat for decades.
posted by pepcorn at 4:27 PM on December 4, 2024 [14 favorites]

The NYPD doesn’t pay out on rewards anyway.

Look, something I think the people wringing their hands over all this are missing is that the job of a CEO, regardless of the industry they’re in, is to make sure the company makes money, and ideally more money quarter over quarter and year over year, and they are rewarded for it handsomely. Everything else the company does is secondary at best. By accepting the job of CEO of UHC, Brian Thompson made the decision—and likely made it long ago—that corporate profits are more important than providing care to people who need it.

Maybe he was a decent person outside of that. Maybe he loved his children, volunteered at his place of worship, donated to charity. Maybe. I don’t know, and I don’t care, because he made the choice to allow the deaths of thousands because it would make some numbers go up on a spreadsheet, and that is enough to wipe out what potential good he could have done for the world with his wealth and prestige.
posted by SansPoint at 4:28 PM on December 4, 2024 [42 favorites]

Some light insider trading, as one does.
posted by McBearclaw at 4:30 PM on December 4, 2024 [22 favorites]

The older I get and the more I experience the more morally okay I am with assassination as a tool for social change. It's been an effective strategy in the past and I'm not a nice person. Am I out in the streets doing violence myself? No, I'm super lazy. I feel pretty confident I'm living my life in such a way that I'm not going to be a target, so I can keep living my life. And if I should have the bad luck to get caught in the crossfire? Well then I'll be dead and literally at the bottom of the list of people who will care.

Every day I understand the hand-wringing less and less. If you think you or someone you care about would be a target of violence for social justice, maybe you should have a come to jesus talk about your/their priorities in life. If you think some of that will leak out and They will start doing violence to Us, news flash besties that's already happening, it's not even new.
posted by phunniemee at 4:36 PM on December 4, 2024 [75 favorites]

you have to pay the merchant for the silencer, anywhere from $400 - $1200 (or more ofc, you can always pay more) depending on the model, then file for and pay a $200 tax stamp with the ATF which includes registration. ATF approval is not instant, it takes historically quite a long time, often up to or over a year or more. while one awaits approval the device remains in the hands of the Class III Federal Firearms License holder (aka gun store) that you specified (colloquially, it is "in jail") to transfer it to your possession.

not all gun stores hold Class III licenses but a growing number do because the suppressor market has grown significantly in the last few years. recently (the past year) the approval process has sped up with some e-forms being reported approved in days instead of months. here is an example of an online sale listing: https://www.eurooptic.com/Rugged-Suppressors-Obsidian-45-with-ADAPT-Modular-Technology-Pistol-Suppressor-4.aspx
posted by glonous keming at 4:45 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

CEO’s should be afraid of getting blown away when they go outside

It’s the only way to make sure they behave
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:50 PM on December 4, 2024 [14 favorites]

As much as, dear friends of MetaFilter, we all love to be sleuths, maybe today is not the day to offer our unsolicited help in tracking someone down or connecting the dots. Just a thought!
posted by Calcifer at 4:51 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

CEO’s should be afraid of getting blown away when they go outside

It’s the only way to make sure they behave

Well, progressive taxation, regulation and unions also work but... here we are.
posted by klanawa at 4:53 PM on December 4, 2024 [35 favorites]

CEO’s should be afraid of getting blown away when they go outside.

CLR James said that the rich are only defeated when they are running for their lives. I’m starting to agree.
posted by ryanshepard at 5:01 PM on December 4, 2024 [15 favorites]

I can't see the killing of any health industry executive as anything but self defense.

He's going to be replaced by another identical guy doing the same stuff. Any CEO that got a concussion and tried to make UHC less evil would be fired and replaced by someone who is committed to keeping it evil. It might make it a little harder to hire these sorts of guys- you'll need to find pay them more or find ones that are a bit more cavalier about risk. But they're not hard to find!
posted by BungaDunga at 5:04 PM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

I’m curious about the use of term “terrorism” in regards to this incident. I am under the assumption that terrorism is random violence affecting just anybody who happens to be where it occurs, thus striking fear or terror into the general public. This was clearly a single, planned target. Murder, yes, but not terrorism, unless of course, the intent was meant to strike fear into health insurance CEOs, then maybe small scale terrorism, but not stochastic. But I will agree that this incident really shakes up the question of ethics in general as it offers the question of whether a single act of murder may be necessary to stem a long chain of seemingly non-violent acts that resulted in the same result - murder.
posted by njohnson23 at 5:12 PM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

anyway I said this in the deleted thread, but the proximate result of scared CEOs may just be jumpy CEO security guys being far more likely to pull a gun on the next protester who tries rushing the TED stage or whatever, and will cite this as why they had a reasonable fear
posted by BungaDunga at 5:12 PM on December 4, 2024 [6 favorites]

i’m more interested in how he knew where and when the CEO would be at that spot - i would never imagine a CEO would walk, unaccompanied, through the city to get to an important meeting like that, and apparently the shooter arrived at the scene only like 15 minutes before the ceo showed up? timing and knowing exactly what hotel entrance the guy was going to use make it seem too precisely carried out to be an amateur job, maybe even need insider info on the ceos plans
posted by aiglet at 5:13 PM on December 4, 2024 [6 favorites]

may be necessary to stem a long chain of seemingly non-violent acts that resulted in the same result - murder.

I'm willing to entertain the prospect that some assassinations had or would have had positive results but the idea that other company executives are going to get visited by the ghost of Christmas Future after this and change their ways is, uh, speculative at best
posted by BungaDunga at 5:14 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

timing and knowing exactly what hotel entrance the guy was going to use make it seem too precisely carried out to be an amateur job, maybe even need insider info on the ceos plans

that stuff all made me wonder if it was a pissed-off employee with a personal grudge
posted by BungaDunga at 5:16 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

I don't know s*** about f*** but would people who are on investor calls know about these types of meetings and where they will be?
posted by CPAnarchist at 5:25 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

It looks like the timing of the conference was pretty well known, public information.

UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) will host its annual Investor Conference for analysts and institutional investors in New York City on Wednesday, December 4, 2024, beginning at 8:00 a.m. EST.
posted by CPAnarchist at 5:33 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

The man had children and a family. The support for violence on this thread is shocking.
posted by thirdring at 5:36 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

In-network! IN-NETWORK claim denials! This is where you should rarely get denied, because that's how it's supposed to work -- they force you to stick to services in-network because that's where all the palms are greased to get things done! And they still deny care.

Something definitely got greased today, but it wasn't palms.
posted by symbioid at 5:40 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

I meant "stochastic terrorism" more as a metaphor for the more typical gun violence we see in society that tends to be aimed at innocent schoolchildren or bystanders and wrought mainly by young men furious about losing their privilege.
posted by rikschell at 5:41 PM on December 4, 2024

The man had children and a family.

I feel bad for them.

The support for violence on this thread is shocking.

That's harder to understand, your lack of understanding. Maybe you've had an easy insurance/healthy time of it? I don't love the celebrating, but shocking? in the face of what this company does on the regular? I'm trying to understand why humans responding as they are would be shocking. I really am. I swear.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:49 PM on December 4, 2024 [36 favorites]

The man had children and a family. The support for violence on this thread is shocking.

Yeah, this guy surely killed thousands, but I don't support capital punishment. I'm not going to claim I can't understand why somebody would do this or what might drive somebody to this, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's ok. But, assuming this wasn't some he-slept-with-my-wife personal grievance having nothing to do with all the people he's killed in the course of his job, nor would I go out of my way to help catch the perp, were I in a position to do so. Like you know on Law and Order SVU when some guy kills the guy who was molesting his kid? That's not ok, but it's hard to throw the book at that guy.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:49 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

IMPORTANT UPDATE: It wasn't a Citi Bike (Bluesky link instead of WashPost).
posted by maudlin at 5:51 PM on December 4, 2024 [7 favorites]

The man had children and a family. The support for violence on this thread is shocking.

Yeah, so did most of the people who died because of his greed.
posted by coffeecat at 5:52 PM on December 4, 2024 [65 favorites]

100 million people in America are saddled with medical debt
100 million sounds like only 30% of 335 million, but if you compute by houshold then this proportion goes considerably higher.

The support for violence on this thread is shocking.

Meh. This is a US thread on a US focused site, so you'd naively guess like half the people in this thread have medical debt in their houshold. The only reason that's not true is some social class dynamics and those people working three jobs, but Americans must all have multiple close friends in medical debt based upon that estimate.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:59 PM on December 4, 2024 [12 favorites]

I don't give a shit about this guy and I don't give a shit about his family but not a month goes by that someone posts some heinous shit on the blue about healthcare in the US and my blood boils to know it's getting worse and it will be a major contributor to the dismantling of public health in Canada. I have no time for individuals' scoldings. It will go from shootings to bombings, just watch, and it's not because anyone wants or takes joy in that it's because shit. Is. That. Bad. Do you get that? Thoughts and fucking prayers
posted by ginger.beef at 6:02 PM on December 4, 2024 [44 favorites]

As someone who lives and works in NYC, I don't love the idea of people being publicly executed here.

That said, my uncle's insurance just discontinued coverage of chemotherapy for his blood cancer because, according to them, the chemo may have been working, but it wasn't working fast enough.

I guess, for their purposes, not getting chemo will "work" faster.

I am not going to celebrate this guy's assassination, but I also refuse to feel any worse about it than I do about the deaths of millions of people at the hands of our predatory health insurance industry.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 6:08 PM on December 4, 2024 [56 favorites]

The Guillotine by The Coup maybe a good sountrack. ;)
posted by jeffburdges at 6:10 PM on December 4, 2024 [7 favorites]

Metafilter - where fascism is bad, but some assassinations are acceptable.
posted by Chuffy at 6:14 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

thirdring: Yes, he did have a family. They all do. All these cruel, callous, and evil people have a family. They have people who love them, for whatever reason. They may even love those people back.

And so do the people those cruel, callous, and evil people allowed to die.

I do not doubt for one second that Brian Thompson lost even a single night of sleep knowing that his decisions would lead people into destitution, an early grave, or both. I don't think he thought of those people at all. They did not exist to him as anything more than numbers on a spreadsheet, abstracted and invisible except for their impact on the bottom line.

Why should I lose sleep for him? Why should I grieve or mourn a man who would never grieve or mourn those people he let die? Why should I give a flying fuck about the family of a man who had a higher net worth than I can even conceive of?

Yes, his family will suffer emotionally. Yes, their children have lost their father. But they will never want for anything materially in their lives. Their lives will go on, comfortable and secure. The same cannot be said for the victims of Brian Thompson's decisions and of UHC's casual, emotionless cruelty.
posted by SansPoint at 6:16 PM on December 4, 2024 [39 favorites]

Yeah, but let's be fair, you usually only speak up when you see an opportunity to troll "leftists".

I feel bad. I'd confused davidmsc with a different, more trolly "libertarian" Mefite. I stand by the rest of it though.
posted by klanawa at 6:16 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

if it quacks like a trolly libertarian
posted by phunniemee at 6:23 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

Look, I generally don't support political violence. I really abhor any civilian casualties. I think it's better to resolve societal problems in a pro-social way, whether that be politics, law, activism, art, whatever. But I also think, and the past backs me up here, that sometimes there is such inertia in deranged and violent structures that the only effective way of change is targeted violence. Obviously, if this proves to be a blip, it will change nothing but the security details of various CEOs. But if more health insurance CEOs start getting executed, and if it is made clear that these executions will continue until the structures change - well, I wouldn't be shocked if eventually things changed.

I mean, saying "this will change nothing" is like saying protests never work because nothing changes after a solitary protest. Change rarely happens from one event alone.

I imagine I'm not the only person who has been thinking about ecoterrorism today. I'm on board with the argument that if we are in a climate crisis, then increasingly extreme measures are warranted. This was recently discussed on Metafilter when the author of How to Blow up a Pipeline and The Overshoot gave an interesting interview in the NYTimes. Now, he makes clear he draws the line at targeting people. Anyway, I read back over the interview today, and a section that stood out to me in the first read seems relevant today:

Q: It’s hard for me to think of a realm outside of climate where mainstream publications would be engaging with someone, like you, who advocates political violence. Why are people open to this conversation?

A: If you know something about the climate crisis, this means that you are aware of the desperation that people feel. It is quite likely that you feel it yourself. With this desperation comes an openness to the idea that what we’ve done so far isn’t enough. But the logic of the situation fundamentally drives this conversation: All attempts to rein in this problem have failed miserably. Which means that, virtually by definition, we have to try something more than we’ve tried.

He makes clear that violence, to work, needs to be paired with careful planning. And it's not at all clear that the shooter today had much of a plan beyond this one assassination. But hey, a girl can dream.
posted by coffeecat at 6:30 PM on December 4, 2024 [26 favorites]

UNH gets its executive killed and is up nearly 1% on the day's trading. If the plan is to try to put healthcare insurance companies on notice, it is curious that there is a lack of manifesto or political statement that one would otherwise expect to follow closely, as it has after other high-profile and sudden acts of violence.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:45 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

Could be this is the first salvo in a series of events that will make the actions of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo look like a passing fancy. Not that those guys had much of a well formed plan.

apparently the shooter arrived at the scene only like 15 minutes before the ceo showed up? timing and knowing exactly what hotel entrance the guy was going to use make it seem too precisely carried out to be an amateur job

Could be the killer, motivated by a negative patient care outcome, looked up his kid's insurance company's web site, committed the faces on the Board of Directors page (apparently removed but still on their site map) to memory and then just went to a publicized event where he got lucky that the first target he saw was the big dog.

you'd naively guess like half the people in this thread have medical debt in their houshold

Debt is the least of the issue. People are dying from rationing care. From cheap shit like drugs that retail for four or five magnitudes more than they cost to produce and distribute to mildly pricey things like post partum care.
posted by Mitheral at 6:47 PM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

I think there's no manifesto because the act is the manifesto; what would be the next step, a bigger handgun? Two handguns? I suppose the killer could be a guy whose wife the victim was having an affair with, or a kid the victim bullied in sixth grade, but he was probably a guy who got fucked over by the victim's sleazy company. What else does the killer really have to say? Big health care bad? I think we all sorta get it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:57 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

I think there's no manifesto because the act is the manifesto

Propaganda of the deed, to steal a phrase?
posted by clawsoon at 6:59 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

→ Americans can still unite!

I see this as an example of Henry Adams' definition of politics as … the systematic organization of hatreds. A shared hatred can unite a lot of people. (It can also be used for very evil purposes. I abhor violence of any form used to further a cause.)
posted by scruss at 7:04 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

You don't write a manifestio when you kill a guy for fucking your wife or owing you money. The two most plausible motives.

But I'm cackling at this. This is very quickly going from "Less Plausible Season 6 of The Wire" and into opening scene of Law & Order.
posted by East14thTaco at 7:13 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

You know that button people talk about in hypothetical situations? The one where you push it and you get a million dollars but a random stranger dies?

Thompson was pushing that button all day long.

That's a pretty powerful image, and hard to deny the truth of it.
posted by splitpeasoup at 7:16 PM on December 4, 2024 [69 favorites]

I think there was a similar discussion relating to 'Ministry for the Future' and what was justifiable to stop greater death/suffering.

I'm guessing CEO's & Board Members will be beefing up their Security packages in their employment contracts + lobbying for more legislative protections.
posted by phigmov at 7:19 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

You're all gonna feel real bad when it turns out he was visited by three ghosts of medical malfeasance last night and was on his way to the investor's conference with a hastily rewritten speech.

Not to restart the conversation but I checked with said trio and they informed me he wasn't on their docket until January. Oh well.

Boo.
posted by B_Ghost_User at 7:26 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

Yeah, I've been thinking about Ministry for the Future today too (mainly the Children of Kali subplot).
posted by coffeecat at 7:30 PM on December 4, 2024 [6 favorites]

personality of the author aside, recall that one of the original goals of the WikiLeaks project was to make it a giant cumbersome pain in the ass for the powerful entities it published the secrets of to maintain security and opsec, forcing them to expend largely wasted resources on those aspects that might be spent on even more odious activities. one might imagine such an operation as occurred today having a similar outcome as these people have to expend more and more time and money worrying about their personal security, and negatively impacting their quality of life even if they aren't specifically "on the list"
posted by glonous keming at 7:33 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

>$10k seems kinda cheap to me, maybe they're not that bothered

Yes, and especially because the wrinkle in this $10K note is that it began at a lower figure, according to the BBC, only to be raised to $10,000 upon deeper reflection.

Ten thousand dollars. For someone who is rapidly becoming the target of the largest American manhunt in the 21st century.

Would it be pollyanic to assume that a sympathetic party in the progressive city government devised the insultingly low $10K figure as a form of political theater?
posted by Gordion Knott at 7:34 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

I dont know how much value to put into it, but right-wing news outlets are reporting about how UHC was under investigation for both antitrust and insider trading. If that's the case, I now wonder if it was assassinating a potential witness.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 7:37 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

Turns out the murdered CEO engaged in some good old insider trading too.

(On preview this is perhaps what Mister Fabulous is referring to, but my source isn't at all right-wing)
posted by coffeecat at 7:38 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

If assassination is normalized, it won't just happen to your preferred targets.

I'm not sure how long happy talk about guillotines has been common. I'm thinking five years, but I'm not sure.

The more I think about why the killing happened, the less sure I am about the motive. The usual issues about sex and money are still plausible.

Would people feel better if it turns out the UHc was too cheap to supply him with protection?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:41 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

You don't write a manifestio when you kill a guy for fucking your wife or owing you money. The two most plausible motives.

I'm not sure if you're serious, but while these motives are plausible, I don't think they're the most plausible; if a guy owes you money or is having an affair with your wife, you probably know where he lives, and can kill him somewhere more secluded and less likely to lead directly to your apprehension and/or death. My guess is that he killed the guy where he did because it was the only real opportunity he had. And my other guess is that if he were an actual hitman who was sicced on the victim by a partner or rival, he would have had a real gun and not peddled away on a bike.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:42 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

I'm 100% serious.

The stupidest explanation is almost always the right one.
posted by East14thTaco at 7:48 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

Thirty years ago a libertarian asshole named Jim Bell advocated for "Assassination Politics", a naively clever cryptographic scheme to accumulate anonymously-collectable bounties for killing government employees who have pissed off enough libertarians.

This was because he hated rule of law and living in a society, as there was back then.

But at whatever point you've got no rule of law anyway, only oligarchs... well. I'm not writing up an Assassination Politics 2: This Time It's Oligarchs because, first, I don't care to, and second, the whole idea that his managing organization could survive openly is some engineer-brain rules-lawyering. I can kinda feel the vibes a little though.
posted by away for regrooving at 7:59 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

This has a very strong "God Bless America" vibe. Anyone remember that movie?
posted by Toddles at 8:05 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

I mean, they'll probably just hike rates and deny more claims to pay for their C-suite to have their own secret service.

I've seen a bunch of people posting similar arguments, either as general defeatism or as an argument that violence won't negatively impact the ownership class, and I think it's untrue.

United Healthcare was already extracting as much economic rent as it could out of its customers, and its C-suite salaries have no relation or dependency on the actual costs of "being an executive". Both of those values are hard up against external limits—principally, in the first case, the Obama-era ratio that largely caps health insurers' profitability.

Since they're milking the system for as much as they can right now, there's nowhere to go when the cost of doing business suddenly increases (because perhaps you have to start having your Board meetings in a place with anti-carbomb barriers at the entrances). The shareholders will just have to eat that as a cost of doing business, in order to keep the gravy flowing.

On an individual executive's level, while they might be able to negotiate for a bump-up to cover the bulletproof glass and goons they'll need to invest in, that's probably a one-shot deal. Longer term, CEOs have the same "problem" as United Healthcare: they're already extracting about as much as the system will let them take. Investors will only let corporate leadership siphon off so much profit as salary and bonuses, regardless of what it's being spent on. And since they're bouncing off that limit already, eventually an increase in the "cost of CEO living" will be felt by the executives.

Plus, there is the psychological effect of making rich people collectively shit their pants a little, which is truly priceless.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:11 PM on December 4, 2024 [13 favorites]

You know that button people talk about in hypothetical situations? The one where you push it and you get a million dollars but a random stranger dies?

TMI: Button, Button by Richard Matheson, later adapted as an episode of The Twilight Zone.
posted by SPrintF at 8:29 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

An America in which politically motivated extrajudicial killing is normalized is an America that is materially much worse than the current incarnation for basically everyone. Certainly for anyone reading this thread. Cheerleading politically motivated extrajudicial killing is an extreme outlier of a political point of view. It's completely wild which speech gets suppressed and which speech gets tacitly endorsed on this website these days.
posted by Kwine at 8:32 PM on December 4, 2024 [14 favorites]

An America in which politically motivated extrajudicial killing is normalized is an America that is materially much worse than the current incarnation for basically everyone.

That America is on its way, and Thompson's murder will neither hasten nor delay it.

We live between the flash and the shockwave.
posted by tclark at 8:38 PM on December 4, 2024 [19 favorites]

That America is on its way, and Thompson's murder will neither hasten nor delay it.

okay sure but it's not very pleasant watching people who are broadly left-aligned cheering it on
posted by BungaDunga at 8:43 PM on December 4, 2024 [2 favorites]

I really abhor any civilian casualties.

I hear you but this guy wasn’t a civilian. If your job is to create preventable death in order to more easily extract money from the people you’re killing you’re not a civilian. You just aren’t.
posted by knobknosher at 8:48 PM on December 4, 2024 [25 favorites]

Anyway, I don’t see this as a “political” killing, I see this as somebody fucking around for a really long time and eventually finding out. Chances are that the person who killed him, even if they killed him for being the CEO of his healthcare company, had a very very personal motive.

I personally am also cheering for a personal reason, the politics is just icing on the cake for me
posted by knobknosher at 8:53 PM on December 4, 2024 [3 favorites]

Also basically every CEO has some kind of insider trading or securities fraud lawsuit against them at one point or another. I don’t think that’s a very compelling motive, but who knows
posted by knobknosher at 8:54 PM on December 4, 2024

okay sure but it's not very pleasant watching people who are broadly left-aligned cheering it on

FWIW, the event that gave leftism its name was the French Revolution.
posted by clawsoon at 8:57 PM on December 4, 2024 [21 favorites]

(Premptive GYOFB):

We may or may not know why. I hazarded it could have been some other corporate exec doing some internecine warfare (ridiculous as it sounds) like a mob hit against a rival. I think the M.O. of the shooter, as noted above, seems to indicate this isn't the case. A pro hit job likely has better options, techniques, and methods.

It's definitely not "stochastic" in any sense. It's clearly targeted. Stochasm doesn't just mean "general any old day violence from young men" it means "random". This wasn't random.

No, this will not change anything in the long run. None of us are THAT stupid. Godspeed to the people working for change here (as one mefite noted up thread.) I mean that. Anything we can do that works to lessen mass suffering is good.

We have hit a point where political redress is all but verboten. All the liberal wishy-washy "the system should solve the problem" only works when the system can and will solve the problem. It already was a sham, we knew this. But we tried and fought what we could. And still do. We hold our noses and vote for the lesser evil over and over... We voted for "the rule of law" Biden and Kamala. We watched as "rule of Law" Biden (using his rights under the rule of law) exculpate his own son not only for the crimes he was convicted of, but anything he MIGHT have been convicted of. And look I get it, ok cool you don't wanna see your last remaining child in prison while you pass to the grave. Bully for you. Most people don't get that. It's also the bullshit abuse of power that the right-wing idiots who vote Trump rail against, and all your crowing about rule of law turns out to be one more convenient fiction. Just like the embrace of the Cheneys. 20 years from now Clan Trump will be the "moderates" when Hitler 2.0 comes up and they're like no no no WE ARE THE GOOD GUYS AGAINST THE HITLERITES.

But. My point being. SCOTUS IS DOMINATED BY THE FAR RIGHT RELIGIOUS BIGOTS WHO WOULD LOVE NOTHING MORE TO HAND MORE BILLIONS TO THESE CORPS AND CHURCHES (in the name of their loving and just god, ocourse)... and has shown, no matter how much they profess to be "rational" and "even-handed" they will give their man what he wants. The Presidency is in the hands of worst of the worst. The House and Senate, also by his party who now have been cleansed of any sort of real resistance. And we already have the "liberal leftist socialist commies" of the Democratic party kowtowing and biting the narrative. "Immigrant crackdowns, vote me! I'm bad just like him, only I do it with the rule of law and pretend like I give a fuck about dead brown kids crossing the border". So many Dems are now saying "we'll just have to work with him"... "Minimize the harm" in some way they will have no capability to set any agenda, and any resistance is feeble and mealy mouthed, as if they ever mean it in the first place and it's not just a fig leaf to get votes.

Where is the resistance? It's no longer in government. This isn't 4 years ago, it's definitely not 8 years ago. The "resistance" are the baddies who only want the "rule of law" when it suited their oiligarchs.

The idiot Trumpists who vote for him (I don't mean ignorant voters who just follow a 'vibe') are obtuse and think "shaking up the system" is good, as if the old centers are holding or will hold. They have enjoyed a certain level of homeostatic stability of the system, but they have not recognized we've entered a new regime. I think a lot of people in this thread crow and cry about "fascism" and not really admit to themselves what we are on the cusp of.

Some of us recognize damn well that a single targeted incident of a CEO will not do a damn thing in systemic change. Just like the death of Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet, Kissinger, The Queen, Limbaugh and all the other evil SOBs (and DOBs) didn't do jack shit for change, especially the decades after they had any sense of power for many of them - we gloat and feel schadenfreude, in the same way we laugh, because otherwise we'd cry.

Some of us feel it's a shame. Some of us wish there was a better recourse. And of course, you always work within the system you have to effect change, but you can't always get what you want. So when something some small tiny measure of what feels like justice happens, some of us might be a little joyed. Not because we think this is a signal of change. We know this is just one small stupid event that won't impact "the machine" but we still feel a sense of justice. I used to oppose the Death Penalty, and still think it's a bad concept in general. But of all the things we should embrace it for, corruption of those who hold power, is one I think we still need, because what other option is there? A white-collar prison. Oh no.

Some of us used to be a lot more empathetic, but decades of abuse and hate by our enemies have destroyed any fucking heart we have for them. I may have empathy for "the white working class" even if they vote wrong. And I will argue with them about queer rights, and BLM and all that, but I will never surrender against the power of the ruling class. One is just cultural ideology that may be changed. The other is an entire system of "law" designed, as Voltaire said "to forbid the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges".

My mother fucking voted Trump both times because "dead" fetuses are more important than her dead daughter who was denied social support for so many years and drained my folks meager savings for retirement, until appeal after appeal she "won" to have her place "inspected" and her fear of being homeless for the 3rd time in life. Or my god-brother who fell asleep in the snow and had to have his leg amputated, only to die of sepsis during recovery. Or my cousin who was denied the right to stay at my aunt's mobile home at a Wal-Mart lot by the "community" there and was sent out in the coldest night in Oregon last year (? or was it 2 years, time is fucky for me these days). Frozen, cold dead. 3 victims, my own family, but Trump still wins. And the evil beasts that are slithering into the swamp to rule with an iron rod of hate... Forgive me if some of us feel this is about the most "justice" we'll ever see.

All your moral righteousness has done nothing to save any of these people and will continue to save no-one.
No, neither will my crowing about this "justified" murder (whether he was shot for that reason, or because some other insider bullshit (or affair or whatever))... Nothing is changing, but I can find a slight sliver of recompense when one of the evildoers who rape and plunder human lives for profit gets their comeuppance. I'm not a fool.

The revolution isn't coming. The American people are too addled by stupidity and have no revolutionary bearing. The US is a reactionary state that mumbles along, and those who are in power as "resistance" will willingly sell all of us out. To the old regime, to defend the very scum we railed against for decades, and it's only going to get worse.

All we have left is each other, and occasional smatterings of uprisings and solidarity in small domains. But when there is no recourse, the people will end up doing more and more of this sort of thing, because the system of so called "justice" will only genuflect at the altar of the bronze bull. The cries of those who suffer under its hooves matter nothing to those who wield the whip.
posted by symbioid at 8:58 PM on December 4, 2024 [57 favorites]

You're misreading me there - I was just setting out where I stand broadly on the outset. I don't consider him a civilian either.

Anyway, this article from ProPublica on United Healthcare is pretty damning. The CEO oversaw and pushed these practices of denying care.
posted by coffeecat at 8:58 PM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

I guess thats the social contract - if there aren't some agreed norms of conduct, then things can fall apart. People consent to be governed, if they stop, then bad things can happen. I guess for an element of the population, they feel the social contract has been broken (all avenues for recourse seemingly spent) and they're suffering at the hands of people who are no longer accountable or feel any social, moral or ethical responsibility beyond shareholder value or profit/wealth-accumulation and the exercise of power. As pointed out elsewhere, this cuts across the spectrum when this particular genie is let out of the bottle (arguably the right have been using terror to target minorities, women, children, health-care workers, environmentalists, labour-organisers, journalists, political opponents et al for a long time now).
posted by phigmov at 8:59 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

The other is an entire system of "law" designed, as Voltaire said "to forbid the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges".

Obligatory pedantry: that wasn't Voltaire, it was Anatole France.
posted by adrienneleigh at 9:04 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

"The words "deny," "defend" and "depose" were discovered by detectives on the shell casings found at the scene where Brian Thompson, the CEO of major insurance group UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down, police sources told ABC News late Wednesday evening."
posted by BungaDunga at 9:07 PM on December 4, 2024 [36 favorites]

Manifesto after all I guess.
posted by mr_roboto at 9:11 PM on December 4, 2024 [8 favorites]

I would have loved this shit in my 20s
posted by mr_roboto at 9:11 PM on December 4, 2024 [5 favorites]

Cheerleading politically motivated extrajudicial killing is an extreme outlier of a political point of view

Why is it in A Tale of Two Cities the reader is thrilled when the Marquis St. Evrémonde is assassinated by Gaspard, yet relieved when the Marquis' heir, Charles Darnay, escapes the Terror? It's almost as if context matters.

I find goofball tankie keyboard revolutionary guillotine fetishists who always imagine themselves as les tricoteuses but never suffocating at the bottom of a Cambodian corpse pit tedious as all hell, but scolds who can't possibly understand why it might be gratifying that a millionaire whose fortune is soaked with blood got the ultimate comeuppance are either thick as a brick or desperate for some moral/political high ground.

It was also funny when those millionaires in the crap submarine got turned into compote, shit, it's still funny.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:16 PM on December 4, 2024 [45 favorites]

Manifesto after all I guess.

Means something, I guess. Maybe.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:17 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

It'll become an interesting trial though if the shooter himself winds up being someone who UnitedHealthcare have effectively killed, like maybe some cancer patient whose treatement they turnned down.

He’ll be played by Gerard Butler, of course.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:21 PM on December 4, 2024

Thompson's wife, Paulette Thompson, said in a statement that she's "shattered" by the "senseless killing.” “Brian was an incredibly loving, generous, talented man who truly lived life to the fullest and touched so many lives.”
posted by gottabefunky at 9:25 PM on December 4, 2024

The insurance company strategy for rejecting claims is commonly framed as "Delay, Deny, Defend".
posted by McBearclaw at 9:27 PM on December 4, 2024 [34 favorites]

You're misreading me there - I was just setting out where I stand broadly on the outset. I don't consider him a civilian either.

You’re right, apologies!
posted by knobknosher at 9:28 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

> The words "deny," "defend" and "depose" were discovered by detectives on the shell casings found at the scene ..

Interesting. There's a book on insurance companies' unfair claims practices, titled "Delay, Deny, Defend." Leaning more toward an affected (and disaffected) client.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:29 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

Jinx, McBearclaw
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:29 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

extrajudicial killing

I guess you're saying a judicial killing would have been OK? Those are only for the poor though; wealthy CEOs aren't eligible.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:31 PM on December 4, 2024 [10 favorites]

The outpouring of people sharing across social media platforms their stories of having treatment denied and/or delayed by UHC reminds me of #MeToo. So who knows, maybe centrist Dems will will stop pushing back on Medicare 4 All by telling us that "lot's of people like their healthcare." (I know, I know, that will never happen)
posted by coffeecat at 9:36 PM on December 4, 2024 [15 favorites]

Lol. Your best lead is they wrote something on a casing?

How about the Creedence?
posted by East14thTaco at 9:41 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

It might make it a little harder to hire these sorts of guys- you'll need to find pay them more or find ones that are a bit more cavalier about risk. But they're not hard to find!

Yeah, if you're selecting for psychopathy them being cavalier about risk tends to be part of the package deal just anyway.
posted by mscibing at 9:43 PM on December 4, 2024 [4 favorites]

Here are a few details about the insider trading allegations:

Thompson in May was sued for alleged fraud and illegal insider trading. The Hollywood Firefighters’ Pension Fund filed a lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group, CEO Andrew Witty, Executive Chairman Stephen Hemsley and Thompson, alleging the executives schemed to inflate the company’s stock by failing to disclose a US Justice Department antitrust investigation into the company.

UnitedHealth Group in 2021 announced it would buy Change Healthcare. The Justice Department sued to break up the deal but a judge ultimately allowed it go through. But the Wall Street Journal in February 2024 reported the Department of Justice re-opened its case, even after the merger went through, to investigate whether the companies properly set up a so-called firewall to prevent customer information from flowing between divisions of the merged company.

The lawsuit claimed Thompson knew about the investigation as early as October 2023 and sold 31% of his company shares, making a $15 million profit, 11 days before the Journal publicized the probe. The Journal report sent UnitedHealth’s stock sinking 5%.

The revelation of the alleged insider trading led Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey to write a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 29, calling on Chairman Gary Gensler to investigate UnitedHealth for the executives’ stock sales. The senators noted Thompson faced up to $5 million in penalties and 20 years of prison time if convicted.

I saw a picture on another site and thought he looked like an ex-football player. My link says he was an "athlete" at his university but doesn’t elaborate. He was also class valedictorian and Homecoming King, as well as valedictorian of his HS class.
posted by jamjam at 10:24 PM on December 4, 2024 [9 favorites]

From withouthistory.bsky.social:

As always my position on political violence is show me a state with no army, police or prisons and I'll consider the possibility of a non violent politics, until then politics *is* violence and the only considerations are tactical.

posted by adrienneleigh at 10:32 PM on December 4, 2024 [26 favorites]

@steinkobbe.bsky.social‬ All jokes aside it's really fucked up to see so many people on here celebrating murder. No one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That's the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to maximise profits on your health and no one else.
posted by Wordshore at 10:32 PM on December 4, 2024 [91 favorites]

dude had a family, sure, I guess, but, like, even hitler had a girlfriend
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:34 PM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

I have exactly as much concern for his family as he had for the families of everyone he murdered in pursuit of more money.

How much is that?

…well, you tell me.
posted by aramaic at 10:49 PM on December 4, 2024 [21 favorites]

The comment from LGM that made me laugh out loud:

"Turns out there are situations in which I am not worried about copycat killings" - commenter Attezz
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 11:21 PM on December 4, 2024 [26 favorites]

Crazy how many people in this thread would go back in time and do nothing more than frown disapprovingly at young Hitler, because wishing death on others or thinking anything good can come of a killing is morally wrong.
posted by Dysk at 11:38 PM on December 4, 2024 [11 favorites]

The reaction to the killing of this ghoul has been so universally positive online across all political and age groups and backgrounds that it has made me slightly more optimistic about the future.

Every world leader or serial killer is going to get their flowers from some awful constituency when they die, but this guy ruined so many families and killed so many people in such a drab and awful way that he just had no one.
posted by zymil at 12:32 AM on December 5, 2024 [17 favorites]

Engels saw similar problems with the treatment of insurance customers the proletariat in Victorian England and described them in The Condition of the Working-Class in England:

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.

posted by autopilot at 12:33 AM on December 5, 2024 [60 favorites]

That man killed more people and caused more pain than any small war and most medium sized ones.

This will keep happening. No, not the targeted assassinations. The murder and misery for profit.

If they don't give themselves up to the Hague they can take the other solution just given. It's their choice. Just like their...insurance.
posted by Comstar at 12:43 AM on December 5, 2024 [11 favorites]

Every world leader or serial killer is going to get their flowers from some awful constituency when they die, but this guy ruined so many families and killed so many people in such a drab and awful way that he just had no one.

It's interesting how almost universally reviled this person is upon hearing of his murder, when I doubt most had even known his name, until today. Certainly, I had no idea who this person was.

It seems like a sign that people are generally frustrated with how things are with healthcare — and the cost of living, generally. The executive class will likely respond by doubling down on security, as well as continuing to use the media to manipulate sympathy out of the public.

The first approach may work, but as the second item goes, so far it seems like no one gives a fuck about this person outside of his immediate family, authorities, and a handful of scolds.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:46 AM on December 5, 2024 [8 favorites]

United Healthcare CEO killed in targeted shooting, r/nursing reacts
posted by jeffburdges at 1:34 AM on December 5, 2024 [16 favorites]

Thirty years ago a libertarian asshole named Jim Bell advocated for "Assassination Politics", a naively clever cryptographic scheme to accumulate anonymously-collectable bounties for killing government employees who have pissed off enough libertarians.


Immediately reminded me of this:

Open Your Eyes [SLYT] - by The Lords of the New Church (1982)

Video games train the kids for war
Army chic in high-fashion stores
Law and order's done their job
Prisons filled while the rich still rob
Assassination politics
Violence rules within' our nation's midst
Well, ignorance is their power tool
You'll only know what they want you to know
The television cannot lie
Controlling media with smokescreen eyes
Nuclear politicians picture show
The acting's lousy but the blind don't know

Open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya
Open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya
Open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya
Open your eyes

They scare us all with threats of war
So we forget just how bad things are
You taste the fear when you're all alone
They gonna git ya when you're on your own
The silence of conspiracy
Slaughtered on the altar of apathy
You gotta wake up from your sleep
'Cause meek inherits earth six feet deep
posted by Chuffy at 1:39 AM on December 5, 2024 [6 favorites]

I find goofball tankie keyboard revolutionary guillotine fetishists who always imagine themselves as les tricoteuses but never suffocating at the bottom of a Cambodian corpse pit tedious as all hell, but scolds who can't possibly understand why it might be gratifying that a millionaire whose fortune is soaked with blood got the ultimate comeuppance are either thick as a brick or desperate for some moral/political high ground.

Not necessarily.

I am generally opposed to the death penalty, and to assassinations like this. And yes, in part I am opposed because of what some may consider a weak-ass "liberal" sentiment about his family and about the rule of law and suchlike.

But to be honest, the REAL reason I am opposed to the death penalty and to assassinations is because of the vindictive thought that "If a criminal gets caught and imprisoned for what he did, I want the fucker to live a VERY VERY long life in prison, where he spends a VERY VERY long time without liberty and being mistreated by wardens and having to stew in the knowledge that he is a failure." That, to me, is far more vindictive than a quick killing.

I don't want the people who wronged me to have a quick death. I want them to MENTALLY SUFFER.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:46 AM on December 5, 2024 [12 favorites]

The rule of law as the moral low ground is certainly interesting.
posted by Dysk at 2:52 AM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

So it's the Japanese society who will continue to hold #1 global champion placement for positively taking advantage of an assassination then. (Re: Japan’s October 2024 general election ended in a brutal takedown for the LDP. Having lost the majority it held since 2012, the party now faces a new era as it attempts to navigate a changed political landscape.)
posted by cendawanita at 3:45 AM on December 5, 2024 [5 favorites]

An America in which politically motivated extrajudicial killing is normalized

We already have an America in which racially motivated extrajudicial killing has been normalized for centuries. I don't see the problem with making billionaires shake in their boots a little. They would Purge the rest of us if they could arrange it.
posted by rikschell at 3:51 AM on December 5, 2024 [38 favorites]

I personally think that if we truly thought about the cost of even one human life, just really let ourselves have a compassionate moment of empathy where we understood the incredible loss to the world incurred when there is even one unnecessary death, well, not one of us would ever become the CEO of a major health care insurance organization.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:57 AM on December 5, 2024 [53 favorites]

Someone on Bsky posted that $10,000 (the reward being offered for information) is 1/9th of the cost of a month of their radiation treatment. Even in death he's a cheapskate.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:32 AM on December 5, 2024 [19 favorites]

And my other guess is that if he were an actual hitman who was sicced on the victim by a partner or rival, he would have had a real gun and not peddled away on a bike.

Bikes in urban areas are the perfect break contact device. Anonymous (no plates), easy to steal with essentially zero chance of getting caught, manoeuvrable, much faster than walking, don't get caught in traffic, easy to buy used for cash with zero tracking, easy to hide after.
posted by Mitheral at 4:33 AM on December 5, 2024 [7 favorites]

One man's grave is another man or woman's ballroom.

I believe this is the plot of The Shining.
posted by slogger at 4:45 AM on December 5, 2024 [8 favorites]

Denial of Claim
posted by Dashy at 4:48 AM on December 5, 2024 [13 favorites]

Based on the above link provided by Dashy, it's not unreasonable to conclude that United Healthcare hires its insurance adjusters from the pool of washed up writers for The Onion.

Your appeal asserts that you were “unable to call” due to being “unconscious” after sustaining the gunshot wound. While we empathize with your condition, we remind you that our Prior Authorization Hotline is available 24/7 and can be contacted by a friend . . .
posted by Gordion Knott at 5:00 AM on December 5, 2024 [5 favorites]

Dashy’s link is clearly satire.
posted by jeoc at 5:07 AM on December 5, 2024 [5 favorites]

I have nothing of substance to add, but I'd like to say that this thread is peak Metafilter and not it's lowest point. It is the perfect ratio of people making jokes at the expense of dead rich assholes, people clutching their pearls over the insolence involved with Mefites having the audacity to laugh at their betters, and deep dive thoughtful comments discussing moral, ethical and political ramifications of both the act itself and our reaction to it.

Seriously, this is the type of thread I would show to people who might potentially fit in here as a general idea of what the site is about in a nutshell.

Also, why is no one talking about the bystander in the video that is just like oh fuck this shit I better get the hell out of here?!
posted by Literaryhero at 5:21 AM on December 5, 2024 [75 favorites]

the bystander in the video that is just like oh fuck this shit I better get the hell out of here?!

I want to put her on a t-shirt. Not today, not my bullshit, she's a champion of our time. True voice of the people. It's the attitude I'm bringing into Trump II, grab my latte and my girlies gays and theys and peacing out, y'all on your own.
posted by phunniemee at 5:41 AM on December 5, 2024 [14 favorites]

Not sure if she was a New Yorker but she showed a true "Fuck no, I'm out" New Yorker attitude.

Though, as the only known witness she is probably already having to talk to cops and worried that she might be a target.
posted by emjaybee at 5:52 AM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

As the husband of a Dateline enthusiast, pretty sure this is the wife's personal trainer.
posted by peachfiber at 6:02 AM on December 5, 2024 [12 favorites]

There's an insightful Boston Magazine article that was printed in 2015 about a doctor who was murdered at Brigham and Women's Hospital that year.

Across the United States, hospital shootings are now a monthly occurrence. In the year leading up to Davidson’s murder, there were more than a dozen, claiming 15 lives, and the trend is clearly on the rise. Between 2000 and 2005, an average of nine hospital shootings ­occurred each year. Over the next five years, from 2006 to 2011, the average spiked to more than 16, resulting in 161 deaths, according to a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

[...]

In each shooting, the killer was driven to extremes by a perceived failure of the healthcare system—to sustain an ill mother, repair a damaged body part, or deliver a desired diagnosis. Each time, a doctor became the target of that discontent.

This sort of healthcare-related violence isn't new.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:03 AM on December 5, 2024 [19 favorites]

Unlike doctors and nurses, healthcare CEOs are very fortunate that they rarely if ever have to actually interact with patients.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:07 AM on December 5, 2024 [8 favorites]

I'm not ruling out another motive besides "angry at insurance companies." Without having followed the details closely, how soon after the shooting did his wife take calls from the media? Not sitting there shocked, or attending to her kids, or talking to LEO. But one on one convos with reporters, and putting out there that he'd received vague threats.
posted by NorthernLite at 6:16 AM on December 5, 2024 [5 favorites]

Hey, now Biden has the chance to use the blanket pardon for what is possibly the easiest way to make 300 million Americans love him.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:24 AM on December 5, 2024 [31 favorites]

Murder is still very much illegal in New York law, not reachable by a presidential pardon.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:37 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

how soon after the shooting did his wife take calls from the media? Not sitting there shocked, or attending to her kids, or talking to LEO. But one on one convos with reporters, and putting out there that he'd received vague threats.

Without weighing in on ghoulishness or hand-wringing, I think we can all agree that everyone grieves differently and the least we can do is accept that and not engage in that kind of speculation at the moment.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:37 AM on December 5, 2024 [7 favorites]

The rule of law as the moral low ground is certainly interesting.

"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
posted by BungaDunga at 6:40 AM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

Murder is still very much illegal in New York law, not reachable by a presidential pardon.

It wouldn't be the first ultimately meaningless political gesture Biden's made.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:42 AM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit alleges
posted by hydropsyche at 6:43 AM on December 5, 2024 [22 favorites]

Without having followed the details closely, how soon after the shooting did his wife take calls from the media? Not sitting there shocked, or attending to her kids, or talking to LEO. But one on one convos with reporters, and putting out there that he'd received vague threats.

Her statement was incredibly weird.

"We are shattered to hear about the senseless killing of our beloved Brian," Pauline Thompson wrote in a statement to Fox News Digital.

"to hear about"? The fuck?
posted by bowbeacon at 6:44 AM on December 5, 2024 [7 favorites]

The rancor is because this act is symbolic, and the single death has become a channel for outpouring all the anger and frustration generated by an inhumane system.

I don't know if anyone here has ever actually had to be on United insurance. For a period of a few years, it was the only insurance I had access to through my employer, who shall remain nameless, but was an institution ostensibly dedicated to lifting up the history of the working class. Their ill-structured budget could not afford any better provider. Most staff had a spouse whose insurance they were on; my spouse was a student at the time, so I had no other choice.

Not only was the denial of claims routine, meaning we had to exhaust our HSA every year and pay out of pocket for a lot, but we also found that a great many care providers simply refuse to accept United. I recall one miserable Christmas week where my husband had fallen and injured his knee badly on Christmas Eve. He was discharged from the ER with a list of referrals for follow-up care, about twenty doctors. I spent a full day calling every one to ask for an appointment. All but one told me they no longer accepted United. After a while I started asking "may I ask why?" And they said vague things like "we just had some problems with their billing process." After doing some research, I found that they had been dropped by a number of large clients (like U of Florida and Duke University) because of denials, and that many providers stopped using them because their reimbursement rates are lower than the other insurance companies. Also, it was nearly impossible to get a human on the line - when I called their offices, hold times normally exceeded an hour, and there was a lot of bouncing around to different departments with more hold time.

I'm grateful to be on an ACA plan with BC/BS now, and grateful that my husband's condition was readily treatable, and that we could afford seeing the doctors we needed. I am sure there are millions out there with something more serious and expensive who had a similar terrible experience.

So, fuck United. At least one person found out.
posted by Miko at 6:44 AM on December 5, 2024 [44 favorites]

NBC News reporting that Thompson had been receiving threats recently, but did not have a security detail. (UHG executives don't have them provided, per company policy.)

So he...died because he was denied coverage?

Somewhere Ironicus, the Demon Prince of Irony, is wincing and saying "No, that's too much".
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:45 AM on December 5, 2024 [22 favorites]

You know what you have to do before you pardon anyone? Catch the person who did it. It's been 24 hours which is an eternity in New York time.

Tick tock motherfuckers.
posted by East14thTaco at 6:53 AM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

is the perfect ratio of people making jokes at the expense of dead rich assholes, people clutching their pearls over the insolence involved with Mefites having the audacity to laugh at their betters,

just speaking for myself, my reaction comes from being in midtown Manhattan all the time: the prospect of masked vigilantes running around and slaying people on the sidewalk is not a pleasant one. It feels less symbolic when it's basically in your backyard, and then it's just gun violence and a dead guy. Is it worse than the routine gun violence enacted in America? Well, not really. It's very bad that we've seemingly become inured to it though.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:53 AM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

So he...died because he was denied coverage?

Somewhere Ironicus, the Demon Prince of Irony, is wincing and saying "No, that's too much".

The latest headline: "Assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO and wife had lived separately for years"

Wait, so like...were they still married for the uh health insurance?! That's too much, haha.
posted by limeonaire at 6:55 AM on December 5, 2024 [32 favorites]

You know what you have to do before you pardon anyone? Catch the person who did it.

You probably don't, witness the draft dodger pardon. As long as it's obvious that a pardon applies to you and your accused crimes it's probably going to stick.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:57 AM on December 5, 2024 [5 favorites]

I don't know if anyone here has ever actually had to be on United insurance.

Part of my job at work is admining benefits and when we're up for renewals the only carrier on the "never in a thousand years" list is UHG.

Cost is always a factor, our company kept all our insurance premiums flat for 4 years all through covid and have one plan that's effectively free for employees (including family coverage), we've had to shut down other internal programs to keep health insurance so affordable for employees, and still we won't debase ourselves to choose UHG.
posted by phunniemee at 6:58 AM on December 5, 2024 [26 favorites]

how soon after the shooting did his wife take calls from the media? Not sitting there shocked, or attending to her kids, or talking to LEO. But one on one convos with reporters, and putting out there that he'd received vague threats.

Making jokes about the targeted assassination of a health insurance CEO is one thing, but let's not police people's reaction to trauma.

They are not here to put on a show for us and we only get a fractional glimpse of their reaction anyway. And it will ALWAYS be deemed either be too little ("how could you be so calm and cold?") or too much ("they were cartoonishly hysterical, really playing it up for the attention..."). There is no "right" way to react to this news that won't draw criticism.

Especially when it's a woman.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:59 AM on December 5, 2024 [38 favorites]

I just hope she gets to go to a Blink-182 concert.
posted by phunniemee at 7:04 AM on December 5, 2024 [8 favorites]

I think the problem with the assassinating Hitler comparisons is that assassinating Hitler might have prevented millions of deaths. Killing this guy has resolved nothing. People are being denied coverage today. Hitler had the power to stop all the killing. This guy had the power to not kill people, sure, and he's an asshole for not using that power. But he didn't have the power to stop the killing. If he had said "We're going to stop doing this and we're actually going to pay for people's healthcare. Whatever the patient's doctor of choice says is the best course of treatment, that's what we're paying for," he would have been fired in an instant and a new CEO would have been brought in who would have continued the denials of coverage. If this is revenge, it's revenge, not problem-solving.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:05 AM on December 5, 2024 [7 favorites]

You probably don't, witness the draft dodger pardon. As long as it's obvious that a pardon applies to you and your accused crimes it's probably going to stick.

To the extent you're arguing for a blanket pardon for anyone who blows away the CEO of a health insurance company I'm with you.
posted by East14thTaco at 7:06 AM on December 5, 2024 [9 favorites]

the amount of effort the police are going to spend on this death, vs. investigating the deaths of people who aren't wealthy white ceos is going to be pretty telling.
posted by LegallyBread at 7:11 AM on December 5, 2024 [17 favorites]

it is weird when people are treating something as purely symbolic when I can't see much beyond an actual guy getting gunned down in an actual place, with an actual masked vigilante running around.

"vigilante gun violence is good as long as it's revenge against the people I hate" is more popular than I thought it was going to be here tbh. Revenge killing is bad!
posted by BungaDunga at 7:14 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

Someone on Bluesky shared this LinkedIn post from the CEO of Blue Cross mourning the United CEO's death. Note that when you keep the comments sorted as "Most relevant", most of the early comments include several people posting, under the real-name LinkedIn accounts, the equivalent of "Of course, I don't approve of murder, BUT ...".

Comments were turned off yesterday. In case any get taken down, here are some quotes:

[Cybersecurity specialist/air force vet] "I just switched my hashtag#HealthCare coverage to United Health Care, so it is particularly sad for me. Anyway, on a positive note, here is a very positive hashtag#HealthCare story." [image cap of CBS tweet and a response. CBS: "This 2-year-old's family couldn't afford his $20,000 electric wheelchair, and their insurance didn't cover it. So, a high school robotics team built him one for free." Public Citizen 6: "This country is so accustomed to its monstrous health care system that when a 2-year-old child with a genetic condition needs to rely on a high school robotics team to meet his basic health care needs the media thinks its a feel-good story, not a dystopian nightmare]"

[Keynote speaker / author]: "While I do not condone violence, I would be dead or bankrupt right now if BMS did not have a grant program for their cancer drugs. I was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and UHC denied every claim. While today's event is tragic, it does not come as a surprise to the millions of people - like myself - who pay their OOP costs and premiums only to be turned away at their greatest time of need."

[Marketing person replying to keynote speaker] "I agree with you that violence is not the answer, but what United HealthCare gets away with is despicable. United HealthCare must be held accountable for what has been done to people's lives while they become millionaires."

[Same keynote speaker, replying to a "managed health" executive who blamed the killing on evil and mental illness and wondered how his industry could help]: "I think you fix the "evil" by approving legitimate claims and rebuking corporate greed. While I do not condone violence, I would be dead or bankrupt right now ... [repeats her earlier story verbatim]."

[Electrical engineer replying to keynote speaker: "People seem to forget that civility is a two-way street. The average person can only be pushed so much and told to take it like an adult before they snap. Even the most loyal and obedient of dogs will kill if they're abused long enough. Humans are no different. Treat them this way for enough time, and eventually the lizard brain will take over."

posted by maudlin at 7:19 AM on December 5, 2024 [47 favorites]

I live in Aurora, CO of Venezuelan gang fame. People get gunned down around here all the time. But, in true Kent Brockman fashion, none of them mattered.

The second a rich white dude gets blown away all of a sudden we give a shit.
posted by East14thTaco at 7:22 AM on December 5, 2024 [21 favorites]

I think everyone rejoicing at this news is painfully naive and short-sighted. You may be cheering at this man's murder today, but what if tomorrow health insurance corporations started murdering people?
posted by AlSweigart at 7:27 AM on December 5, 2024 [35 favorites]

^^ oh, wait...
posted by hydra77 at 7:29 AM on December 5, 2024 [14 favorites]

People get gunned down around here all the time. But, in true Kent Brockman fashion, none of them mattered.

nobody says you have to care about this guy personally to see it in terms of a revenge killing, which is bad when it's a random poor non-white person and also, generally speaking, when it's a rich guy.

Lots of gang violence is against (and between) genuinely bad people- that doesn't mean it helps anything when a bullet finds someone with blood on their hands.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:40 AM on December 5, 2024

Wow. People talking like this on LinkedIn is a watershed moment.
posted by ocschwar at 7:41 AM on December 5, 2024 [20 favorites]

You can be a card-carrying hard-left progressive, you can be an Ultra MAGA crusader, you can be a squishy liberal, you can be a NeverTrump Republican, you can be completely disconnected from politics entirely, and do you know what all of the above have in common?

Every one of them knows people -- themselves, family members, friends, coworkers, shared horror stories online -- who have been viciously screwed over by the health insurance industry. Every one of them.

There aren't many universal issues that cross nearly all cultural boundaries left in America, but this is one of them.
posted by delfin at 7:41 AM on December 5, 2024 [67 favorites]

To be clear, I don't think there's one bit of humor in this, and I didn't read the r/nursing satire as funny in any way.

Satire is powerful by using a twist or play to reveal a truth. The truth here is that life and death have become just another corporate metric, just another negotiating or leveraging tactic of the powerful. That is wrong. Deeply wrong. Mr. CEO may have realized it before he died at its hand, but probably not.
posted by Dashy at 7:50 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

I don't understand the people posting here urging morality, decorum, "think of the guy's family" kinds of things but that is fine, good to see different opinions

but if you've posted the same thing several times, please: we heard you the first time. A percentage of people posting here clearly do not give a shit about this dead guy, his professional role in life resulted in many deaths and our system is set up in such a way to reward him for that. We fucking aren't embracing the fact that our future will result in more of this stuff, and worse, we are acknowledging the fact. If you are here to moralize for the 3rd or 4th time, I've got a submarine to sell you.
posted by ginger.beef at 7:50 AM on December 5, 2024 [20 favorites]

the firehose of unsympathy has been heartwarming!
posted by tarantula at 7:54 AM on December 5, 2024 [13 favorites]

One wonders… what would our situation be if the democrats had run on a universal healthcare platform this election?
posted by soylent00FF00 at 7:56 AM on December 5, 2024 [13 favorites]

What infuriates me that this is front page news and not the thousands of people denied services every single fucking day. People who have died in debt. People who have been so scared of debt that they have avoided healthcare and then died. People who have ongoing suffering needlessly for corporations greed.

I work in a hospital and not a single day goes by where I don't have discussions about outcomes and insurance denials about some issue or another. Every day I'm there I'm telling paid licensed professionals that their treatment plan just won't be covered. Many times the patient won't even know that there were other options because they are being limited even prior to the discussion with the patient. Sometimes the patient will be very aware.

Sometimes it's a medication. Sometimes it's rehabilitation. Sometimes it's cancer treatments. Sometimes it's things like wheelchairs or other dme. Over and over and over again.
posted by AlexiaSky at 8:03 AM on December 5, 2024 [49 favorites]

nobody says you have to care about this guy personally to see it in terms of a revenge killing, which is bad when it's a random poor non-white person and also, generally speaking, when it's a rich guy.

We are seeing this in terms of a revenge killing. And revenge killings are bad. But this is exactly why the word "shadenfreude" exists. We know our reactions are shameful and that we shouldn't be feeling this way, but we can't help ourselves because of who this guy was and what he represented.

Draw whatever conclusions about the current state of society and/or politics you'd like from that.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:07 AM on December 5, 2024 [10 favorites]

Words including “delay” and “deny” appear to have been inscribed on casings collected after Brian Thompson was shot outside a Midtown hotel.
posted by saladin at 8:07 AM on December 5, 2024 [6 favorites]

nobody says you have to care about this guy personally to see it in terms of a revenge killing, which is bad when it's a random poor non-white person and also, generally speaking, when it's a rich guy.

The difference is that all other firms of accountability for the rich white guy have failed, and have failed for at least a generation or two.

We cheer this because it's all we have. If there was any meaningful prospect of health insurance CEOs being held to account by other means, the situation would be different. But it isn't, and so here we are.
posted by Dysk at 8:21 AM on December 5, 2024 [29 favorites]

I must admit that my initial reaction to reading about someone gunned down on the street and then seeing people gleeful about it felt shocking and depressing, but this thread has helped me understand the context. As someone lucky enough to have "good" insurance (i.e. family members needing surgery didn't bankrupt us) I realize now I've been in even more of a bubble than I thought. I knew health care was a massive burden on many people in the country, but jeffburdges' link to the Texas Tribune article "100 million people in America are saddled with medical debt" opened my eyes to the immense scale of the crisis, and seeing folks online sharing their stories does have shades of OWS/BLM/#metoo, in that opening the floodgates of shared experience may possibly move the needle nationally. We've seen with those previous movements, the reactionary pushback can be fierce, but the universality of the health care crisis may cause a different outcome. I also think part of what is necessary for massive change is psychological: So many Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that health care isn't a right, that medical debt is a shameful moral failing on their part, rather than a shameful failing of our society. There are also so many people who truly believe that "American health care is the best in the world. Where else is better?" (I literally heard someone say this on line at the supermarket yesterday), so many people can't even imagine a better system than we have now.
posted by gwint at 8:23 AM on December 5, 2024 [35 favorites]

"vigilante gun violence is good as long as it's revenge against the people I hate" is more popular than I thought it was going to be here tbh.

I think it's a bit more nuanced than that - it's more, "vigilante gun violence is good as long as it's done responsibly and adheres to a moral code." Like, if the shooter had shot that woman bystander (who likely got a good look at him!), I don't think people would be turning him into a folk hero. If he had shot a doctor who was basically the hapless middleman of care denial - I also don't think people would be reacting this way. If he had recklessly sprayed a bunch of bullets all over midtown, regardless if anyone got killed, I don't think people would approve. What we're seeing is a broad swath of the population is happy to entertain a clinical and disciplined guerrilla war against those who participate in vast corporate greed. There's lots of people I don't like who I wouldn't want to be gunned down. For example, journalists I don't agree with, however vile they may be - it's easy to see how that becomes a slippery slope in which all journalists are at risk. Likewise, I don't actually want Trump (or any politician) to be assassinated. But I'd contribute to a crowdfunding effort to pay an assassin to take down the top 5% unless they agree to redistribute their wealth. Apparently I'm not alone in feeling that way!

This feels like a bit of derail, but briefly:

Hitler had the power to stop all the killing.

Ian Kershaw (historian of Germany) didn't write a book called the Hitler Myth for nothing.
posted by coffeecat at 8:24 AM on December 5, 2024 [21 favorites]

If they can find the assassin, maybe Trump could appoint him to head CMS.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:24 AM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

Words including “delay” and “deny” appear to have been inscribed on casings collected after Brian Thompson was shot outside a Midtown hotel.

Repeating for emphasis because holy shit
posted by phunniemee at 8:25 AM on December 5, 2024 [14 favorites]

(To me, the "oh no poor CEO is human too, killing is bad" attitude is directly analogous to e.g. hand-wringing about how terrible war is actually, and maybe we shouldn't arm Ukraine. When people are under attack, and have no other recourse, they fight back with direct violence. The problem isn't the violence itself - that's a symptom of a much deeper problem. And if you aren't in a position to solve the deeper problem, you show solidarity with those engaged in the fight, in my book. You can choosr to turn the other cheek, take another beating, but you can't demand the same of your fellows without being part of the problem.)
posted by Dysk at 8:27 AM on December 5, 2024 [31 favorites]

Many times the patient won't even know that there were other options because they are being limited even prior to the discussion with the patient

This is something I will always wonder about—we were on UHC back during the nightmare days of a family member's serious illness about 10 years ago, and some decisions were made in the course of treatment that year that had an indelible impact on their health and the course of our lives. They nearly died because of some of the treatment choices and were left with a permanent chronic health condition and chronic pain and so many years of medical bills. It changed so much.

I remember being so thankful for even that coverage back then, and thinking that compared to whatever plan we had before (I think also UHC), the new plan was the "good" insurance. I worked so hard to make sure we had that. It was an intensely stressful time. And yet...I know that things like UHC's list of drugs for which precertification was required and the list of doctors who were in-network definitely made a difference in treatment that year, probably for the worse.

I'll forever wonder what else might have been different and how that might have changed things.
posted by limeonaire at 8:27 AM on December 5, 2024 [29 favorites]

This could be a real harm reduction. Like if potential school shooters see how this guy is loved, instead of shooting up an elementary school they could go and try and kill some CEOs instead?
posted by Iax at 8:30 AM on December 5, 2024 [27 favorites]

I think if they find the killer the most tragic thing about this whole thing will be that the killer is himself dying, and likely a death that might well have been prevented. I think that's the only way it makes sense to kill this person in a way that makes it so likely to be caught (no gloves, cameras everywhere, go leave your DNA at Starbucks beforehand, etc.) I mean if you're smart enough to pull this off, you might not be smart enough to pull of the perfect crime, but you're surely smart enough to do better than this if you actually have care enough to bother. If you have something to lose.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:31 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

This is yet another event in the chain that led to this thought I had last week:

It seems like Star Trek TOS episode “A Piece of the Action” was a documentary.
posted by wittgenstein at 8:35 AM on December 5, 2024

I had to switch to United when I changed jobs so I could keep my therapist. Everyone here raves about them so much and slams on my old insurance, but so far except for mental health (which so far has had no problems for me), they've been a pain to get going. Knowing they deny stuff even more....oy vey. Well, I know they all suck anyway and switching to someone else probably isn't any better, but still.

Those casings, man.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:37 AM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

if potential school shooters see how this guy is loved, instead of shooting up an elementary school they could go and try and kill some CEOs instead?

From your lips to God’s ears.
posted by corb at 8:39 AM on December 5, 2024 [12 favorites]

I had to switch to United when I changed jobs so I could keep my therapist. Everyone here raves about them so much and slams on my old insurance, but so far except for mental health (which so far has had no problems for me)

Same here. It's been smooth sailing with them for such services so far. But I don't want to wait for the first catastrophic illness to become their next statistic.
posted by ocschwar at 8:41 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

All health insurance is bad. Period, full stop. I went bankrupt back in the early 00s thanks to BC/BS. I'd been on UHC before that and it was actually better. It's worse now, I guess. They wibble and wobble and you never know which one is "good" and which one is "bad" and the truth is they all suck. They are all completely evil. For profit health care, and that's what this is, that's what we have in the US no matter how many hospitals and health insurance companies wring their hands and swear they are "non profits", is completely fucking evil.

And Medicare for All is out of date. In the last decade they have quietly, systematically looted and gutted medicare. It covers maybe a third of what it covered even 8 years ago. Medicaid, which is different state by state, is going through the same shake up. It's not allowed to compete with private insurers, you see, so it has to be managed and run like private insurance. Now, at least in Oregon, it's started routinely denying care just like the private insurance does. I was back on OHP last fall and they said no MRI, no physical therapy, good luck with that rotator cuff and by the way, even though the doctor who did it wants you to have another colonoscopy, nah, you had one three years ago.

I'm drowning in medical bills and I have gold star amazing insurance because I work in academia. I could not pay what my employer pays on my behalf; it's like half my salary and it's still not enough. The elderly relative with major health issues I care for is drowning even deeper and he has Medicare and a back up medical plan which is - surprise! - run by United Health Care. His premiums, for that and for the prescription plan, run $300 a month, by the way, which is a damn chunk when your social security and only income is $1800 a month - and still the bills come in and in and in. Fortunately he has savings. I don't and in 15 years I'll be elderly and probably in poor health myself.

BURN IT ALL THE FUCK DOWN.
posted by mygothlaundry at 8:43 AM on December 5, 2024 [42 favorites]

For people getting these denials, rahaeli on Bluesky had a thread that was both interesting and helpful, and should be spread far and wide:

To everyone in a similar scenario: the tactic my doctor's office has taught me is to ask, in writing, for:
1) the name, board specialty, and license number of the doctor making the determination the treatment was not medically necessary;
2) copies of all materials they relied on to make their determination;
3) proof the doctor making the determination has maintained registration in your specific state and documentation of their meeting all their continuing education requirements
4) the aggregate rate at which similar treatments are denied vs approved by the specific doctor being used for peer review.

You are not entitled by law to *all* of these things in most states, but you're entitled to some of them, and you can always ask for them.

This is, she says, a wildly successful tactic, because if the insurance company answers them honestly, it gives you evidence that the "doctors" making these determinations are practicing medicine out of scope, without proper licensing and qualifications, in areas they are not competent in.

Everyone knows this is true; it's not a secret in any way. But it's in violation of a number of regulations, and a LOT of times the company will just give up and pay the bill rather than handing you proof they're violating the regs. It's a tactic that has worked for me many, many times.

Also, once you do this once or twice, they will flag you as A Person Who Will Cause Problems On Purpose and be much more liberal about approving your claims -- the last one I fought was a maintenance drug denial and it was 3 weeks and a ton of paperwork last year, 24 hours this year.

I hope this helps someone. I mean, these people desperately need a kick in the ass, so let's give them what they need. It would be nicest to slam it back to pre-Reagan era regulations and rules, but that's not going to happen, so they should get the legal equivalent of a simultaneous colonoscopy and prostate exam.
posted by mephron at 8:46 AM on December 5, 2024 [259 favorites]

I mean, these people desperately need a kick in the ass,

that ass has children, a family 🥺👉👈
posted by phunniemee at 8:48 AM on December 5, 2024 [16 favorites]

that ass has children, a family

Do they need kicking too?
posted by mephron at 8:49 AM on December 5, 2024 [17 favorites]

> For profit health care, and that's what this is,

Nooooooo no no no no. This is for-profit middlemen between patients and for-profit health care. Both are huge problems, but health insurance is the far more sinister of the two.

Like you said, "All health insurance is bad. ... They are all completely evil."
posted by atbash at 8:49 AM on December 5, 2024 [10 favorites]

"All health insurance is bad. ..."

To the extent that we still have the ACA, we have health insurance modeled explicitly after France and the Netherlands.

So, EU mefites: are you also inclined to say all health insurance is bad?
posted by ocschwar at 8:52 AM on December 5, 2024

I think everyone rejoicing at this news is painfully naive and short-sighted. You may be cheering at this man's murder today, but what if tomorrow health insurance corporations started murdering people?

Sorry, I need to make it clear that I was joking when I said this.

Can anyone tell me how I can block the New York Times from sending me job offer emails?
posted by AlSweigart at 8:54 AM on December 5, 2024 [14 favorites]

Can anyone tell me how I can block the New York Times from sending me job offer emails?

Offer to write an editorial for them about how Trump will be terrible for the country, or about how the current legal system is biased against transgender people. They'll forget you exist so fast and so hard you'll start to wonder if you exist.
posted by mephron at 8:57 AM on December 5, 2024 [15 favorites]

that ass has children, a family

Yeah. That's exactly the crux of this. People who were denied treatments by their insurance company have families and children, too. But it wasn't ever this guy's job to think of them.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:02 AM on December 5, 2024 [21 favorites]

This is the letter every company subscribed to United should be sending today:

Dear sirs,

Like every company subscribed to UHC plans, and like every American, we are
shocked and stunned by the murder of your CEO, Mr. Brian Thompson. We are also
shocked by the eruption of gallows humor and even outright celebration of the murder
in so many public spaces, including forums for health care professionals. In all
the catharsis we see in public opinion, we are forced to confront a shocking
revalation that requires action on our own part: we must acknowledge that UHC
has a reputation for denying medical claims in bad faith, and that UHC's reputation
is a driving factor behind the public's near-gleeful response to Mr. Thompson's murder.

We take no joy in saying this, but we are a running a business. We are tasked
with recruiting and retaining thousands of employees, and this morning we woke
up to the revelation that until we take sensible action, every job candidate we
approach will read your company's name in our offer letter, and then view it as a red
flag. This is not something we can wait about any more than any other business
run for profit. We have people to recruit today, and people to retain today,
with whom we expect to perform work and make money today. We are sending
this message to you knowing that thousands like it are sitting in drafts
folders around the country.

So with all due respect and sympathy, we'd like to know what
concrete action you intend to take to address
this crisis, which affects both your business and ours.

Sincerely:

X
posted by ocschwar at 9:02 AM on December 5, 2024 [19 favorites]

So, EU mefites: are you also inclined to say all health insurance is bad?

Health insurance in Canada isn't terrible. But our health care system is not for profit. When people get turned down by the insurance company for expensive, life-saving drug coverage it's the kind of thing that tends to make the national news.
posted by kitcat at 9:26 AM on December 5, 2024 [9 favorites]

We already have an America in which racially motivated extrajudicial killing has been normalized for centuries.

Was going to note this - just as one example, a commonly accepted lowball estimate of the number of lynchings in the US in the ~100 years after the Civil War is 4400-4700 people killed.

Lynchings were absolutely a form of economic and political terrorism, above all else. Walter White's still essential and powerful 1929 book Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch demonstrates this clearly.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:26 AM on December 5, 2024 [13 favorites]

I don't get it. If this dead guy was holding a machine gun in midtown Manhattan and firing it into a crowd, killing and injuring hundreds, and someone took him out, it wouldn't be even worth discussing whether that was ethical. But because he used a pen to kill thousands of people in the name of capitalism, there's some kind of question of ethics?

Reframe, seriously.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:32 AM on December 5, 2024 [47 favorites]

Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows C.E.O.’s Killing

The fatal shooting on Wednesday of a top UnitedHealthcare executive, Brian Thompson, on a Manhattan sidewalk has unleashed a torrent of morbid glee from patients and others who say they have had negative experiences with health insurance companies at some of the hardest times of their lives.

“Thoughts and deductibles to the family,” read one comment underneath a video of the shooting posted online by CNN. “Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network.”

On TikTok, one user wrote, “I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for by insurance makes me physically sick. I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all of those patients and their families.”

The dark commentary after the death of Mr. Thompson, a 50-year-old insurance executive from Maple Grove, Minn., who was also a husband and a father of two children, highlighted the anger and frustration over the state of health care in America, where those with private insurance often find themselves in Kafka-esque tangles while seeking reimbursement for medical treatment and are often denied.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:35 AM on December 5, 2024 [24 favorites]

The older I get and the more I experience the more morally okay I am with assassination as a tool for social change. It's been an effective strategy in the past and I'm not a nice person.

phunniemee - I thank you for having the guts to say this out loud. I've arrived at the same place as a woman in her 40's. I'm now too old, unfit, unskilled and unattractive to be a successful assasin, but I've lost my moral qualms about it. I'm surprised to find myself here.
posted by kitcat at 9:36 AM on December 5, 2024 [39 favorites]

A longtime employee of UnitedHealthcare said that workers at the company had been aware for years that members were unhappy. Mr. Thompson was one of the few executives who wanted to do something about it, said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the company does not allow workers to speak publicly without permission.

I think I should rewrite what I had above. Something something "time if of the essence" something something "results now" something something.
posted by ocschwar at 9:43 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

Michael Tae Sweeney: Hallmark Christmas movie where she's an unhappy mid level insurance executive visiting Manhattan for a conference around the holidays, and he's a handsome rogue who she keeps mysteriously running into in odd places around the hotel. DENY DEFEND PROPOSE
posted by mittens at 9:48 AM on December 5, 2024 [31 favorites]

@geftokingmongoose.bsky.social‬: Muppet history to south korea coup to health insurance ceo assassination has been quite the ride

@graveyboat.bsky.social‬: There's gotta be some kind of We Didn't Start The Fire verse that can mention these events in succession but I can't think of the rhymes to make it happen. I'd still like credit for the funny idea though.

Ok I figured it out...

🎶Muppet twitter sex pest
🎶South Korea coup unrest
🎶Hawk Tuah crypto scam
🎶Murdered CEO
🎶We didn't start the fire 🙅🔥
posted by Wordshore at 9:52 AM on December 5, 2024 [20 favorites]

(what was the muppet thing?)
posted by mittens at 9:58 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

Muppet history … oh no, well now I’ve learned about a milkshake duck I wasn’t expecting. I liked that little thing.

Anyway, I saw on the NYT live update page that an unnamed employee is claiming that Thompson was “one of the few executives who wanted to do something about” inequities in health insurance and “spoke about the need to change the state of health care coverage in the country and the culture of the company, topics other executives avoided.”

I don’t know if that would have ever amounted to anything; I doubt it, personally. I do think that the bullet casings could be either sincere or a false flag—although, again, I doubt his speeches made him that dangerous on the inside.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:01 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

"But but but he was one of the GOOD executives who kill people by denying coverage!"
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:03 AM on December 5, 2024 [16 favorites]

Pick a movie, keep one actor, replace the rest with muppets. What film and actor did you choose?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:04 AM on December 5, 2024

The further this year progresses the more I feel like anything honest I have to say about the news is gonna get me put on a list.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 10:06 AM on December 5, 2024 [16 favorites]

It certainly possible that the shooter was there to kill the first high-level exec that they saw headed through the side door, isn't it?
posted by kitcat at 10:07 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

‪Dr. Simon D. A. Clark‬ ‪@kelpiesi.bsky.social‬
·
7h
During a re-watch of the Return of the Jedi a friend cheered when the Emperor died. Needless to say, I was shocked and reminded him that the Emperor was a human being with a granddaughter.
posted by saladin at 10:10 AM on December 5, 2024 [62 favorites]

The thing is: no health insurance executive can change this system, either. As said above, you'd just get fired. So every health insurance executive knows that the system ruins people, knows that they can't change it, and decides that they may as well get their slice of the pie anyway.

Given the way US politics are going, I've given up hope that I'll live to see single payer. But I think if we could remove employers from the equation, and force the insurance companies to face their actual customers in an actual market, we could make some progress. If people could actually choose to change insurance companies in response to their endless scandals, there would be a meaningful check on bad behavior. It's pathetic that it has to be mediated through investor self-interest, but this is America.
posted by McBearclaw at 10:15 AM on December 5, 2024 [6 favorites]

@pixelatedboat.bsky.social‬: I’ve studied the video of the CEO being shot and as of now my top suspects are Solid Snake, Agent 47, or the John Cusack character from Grosse Pointe Blank.
posted by Wordshore at 10:17 AM on December 5, 2024 [7 favorites]

Gun manufacturers have been touting silencers recently due to its health care benefits.
posted by dsword at 10:17 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

DirtyOldTown: “I mean, they'll probably just hike rates and deny more claims to pay for their C-suite to have their own secret service.”

I had an inkling today about exactly why everyone's least favorite social media owner has been hanging around everyone's least favorite president. Money can't buy that level of protection.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:18 AM on December 5, 2024 [13 favorites]

Pick a movie, keep one actor, replace the rest with muppets. What film and actor did you choose?

The Muppet Movie, keep Kermit, replace the rest of the cast with muppets of muppets. Double muppets.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:21 AM on December 5, 2024 [12 favorites]

I wouldn’t make too much of the fact that the killer didn’t wear gloves; that’s us learning about crime from tv. Why would this guy need gloves? He didn’t touch anything, except the gun and the bike, which he took with him and which I expect are now at the bottom of the Gowanus, or similar. Gloves are for when you know you’d be leaving a trail.

I’m musing a lot over the word “depose.” It’s the side variance from “deny, delay, defend.” And it’s a word with at least a couple of meanings: depose as in remove from a position, like dictators are deposed, and depose as in a legal proceeding, where someone is interviewed to put their statements on record. Which did he mean, and why?
posted by Miko at 10:23 AM on December 5, 2024 [7 favorites]

Ok, anyone else find the two released photos today of the supposed suspect without a face mask to not look like the same guy from the Starbucks footage? It's clearly a different backpack and jacket - you don't need to be much of a sleuth to see that - and the tops of their faces don't really look that much alike, besides being young white guys. Is the Starbucks footage no longer supposed to be the guy? Anyway, seems like he might manage to disappear.
posted by coffeecat at 10:26 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

The Encyclopedia Galactica defined the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Apparently, according to a later version of the Encyclopedia Galactica that fell through a time eddy in space, the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation reference was updated. In the latter time frame it reads, "The Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation were a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:30 AM on December 5, 2024 [11 favorites]

further horribleness from the insurance industry: Anthem stating it's not going to pay for anesthesia for patients when operations go longer than they are supposed to.

Which is bad news, according to anesthesiologists: "...median salary: $430,600...If you're outraged by this, you're getting played!"

I don't know who's right, and it's possible there might be some effects on patients, but at first take it does seem to be a fight between the insurance companies and the docs. And though the insurance companies take quite a cut, the vast majority of the costs paid by the insurance companies to providers come from your premiums, so the savings from lower fees for docs will be split - how, I don't know - between Anthem's higher profits and lower fees for their customers.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:36 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

RE: the BCBS - anesthesiologist debacle: I'm not sure how this would affect anesthesiologists' salaries. Wouldn't this just be billed directly to the patient? Seems that the anesthesiologists are fighting for their patients, no?
posted by hydra77 at 10:41 AM on December 5, 2024 [12 favorites]

After much mulling, my final opinion on this.

This is a tragic senseless death, we must prevent to deaths of other CEOs by providing public health insurance coverage to everybody, this is of the utmost importance, this would ensure nobody has to risk their live providing health insurance for profit.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:42 AM on December 5, 2024 [59 favorites]

Class war is when a CEO making $25 million a year tries to get you mad at an anesthesiologist making $500k a year.
posted by mittens at 10:48 AM on December 5, 2024 [51 favorites]

Question: is putting your cryptic manifesto on assassination bullet casings an existing idea (either in real life or fiction) or is this a Citibike Guy original? Because regardless of your thoughts about anything else, that's absolutely cool as fuck
posted by theodolite at 10:49 AM on December 5, 2024 [14 favorites]

To the extent that we still have the ACA, we have health insurance modeled explicitly after France and the Netherlands.

So, EU mefites: are you also inclined to say all health insurance is bad?

You actually got me a bit curious about this, so I did some digging. I can't find any good comparisons, although I did find a Vox article on the Netherlands from a few years ago. This quote in particular kind of summed up an important difference to me (emphasis mine):

The Netherlands leans on private actors — private insurers, independently employed doctors, privately owned nonprofit hospitals — to provide health care. But it also places strict regulations on the health sector to achieve the goals of affordability and access. That balance of market principles and close government regulation has created a health care system that seems to work well for the Dutch.

I don't have the data to show it, but I would also wager that the actual cost for services and drugs in the Netherlands is much, much lower than the US. I do know that premiums and deductibles still exist but they are a tiny fraction of what they cost in the US.

I think there are other notable differences as well such as the co-ops the article mentions which don't really have an equivalent in the US.
posted by photo guy at 10:50 AM on December 5, 2024 [12 favorites]

Anyway, seems like he might manage to disappear.

CCTV density in Central Park is apparently comparatively low and that path network and number of exits large. It seems like a great place to throw off the scent.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:51 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

From morningstar.com:

UnitedHealth Group’s UNH annual investor day on Dec. 4, 2024, was cut short by the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, the company’s medical insurance segment leader. Thompson had led this segment, which insures more Americans than any other company, for three years. He was a 20-year veteran of the company, with previous experience leading the segment’s government plans. Citing police, The New York Times reported that the shooting appeared targeted, although details are scarce at this time.

From a corporate viewpoint, investors should know that UnitedHealth’s management bench is typically quite deep. We expect the company to smoothly transition Thompson’s role to an internal candidate under the direction of CEO Andrew Witty.

Before the shooting, UnitedHealth delivered a near-term view of its financial prospects roughly in line with our estimates. However, to recognize recent cash flows and a slightly higher outlook for long-term growth beyond our explicit forecast period, which we think better reflects the firm’s high-quality businesses and exemplary capital allocation, we are boosting our fair value estimate to $590 per share from $550. Shares still trade close to our fair value estimate.

UnitedHealth’s near-term guidance remains in line with the projections previewed on its third-quarter earnings call, and our estimates look close to those goals. For 2024, the firm still expects 9%-10% growth in adjusted EPS to $27.50-$27.75, despite absorbing $0.75 per share from Change-related business disruption effects. For 2025, the firm expects mid-to-high-single-digit adjusted EPS growth to $29.50-$30.00, slightly lower than our estimate. We remain comfortable with our higher view, especially since UnitedHealth regularly exceeds its initial expectations.

In case anybody was wondering how the moneyed class was taking the news.
posted by foxfirefey at 10:54 AM on December 5, 2024 [27 favorites]

o the extent that we still have the ACA, we have health insurance modeled explicitly after France and the Netherlands.

So, EU mefites: are you also inclined to say all health insurance is bad?

You actually got me a bit curious about this, so I did some digging. I can't find any good comparisons, although I did find a Vox article on the Netherlands from a few years ago.

I live in the Netherlands. Comparing the system to the US is comparing Apples and Oranges.

There are private health insurers here. They are non-profit and highly regulated by the government. In essence, they are more like managers of hospital services.

The government sets their fees, and sets the maximum yearly deductible (385 euros last year) and they are obligated to insure everyone equally. The government sets whats covered as part of the 'standard package' meaning pretty much everything except for stuff like physiotherapy that you can pay more for. And if you can't pay any of this, the government provides assistance.

So, if the USA moves to the Netherlands model, I'd say you won.
posted by vacapinta at 11:02 AM on December 5, 2024 [38 favorites]

In case anybody was wondering how the moneyed class was taking the news.

They didn't even suspend trading on the stock.
posted by scolbath at 11:03 AM on December 5, 2024 [7 favorites]

There are private health insurers here. They are non-profit and highly regulated by the government. In essence, they are more like managers of hospital services.

The government sets their fees, and sets the maximum yearly deductible (385 euros last year) and they are obligated to insure everyone equally. The government sets whats covered as part of the 'standard package' meaning pretty much everything except for stuff like physiotherapy that you can pay more for. And if you can't pay any of this, the government provides assistance.

Sure does sound like the ACA!
posted by Gadarene at 11:03 AM on December 5, 2024

Question: is putting your cryptic manifesto on assassination bullet casings an existing idea (either in real life or fiction) or is this a Citibike Guy original?

Didn't they write ironic messages on the bombs dropped during World War II or is that something Kubrick invented for Dr. Strangelove?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:04 AM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

(NY Post): The gun used by the shooter in Wednesday’s shocking Midtown slaying appears to match a B&T VP9, an update of the Welrod pistol — a suppressed firearm developed in the Second World War.

A recent purchase of the gun by the Connecticut-based gunmaker is an investigative lead in the manhunt for the killer, who used an apparently silenced pistol, sources said.

But the killer’s gun has not yet been recovered, so the link to the rare firearm is only a lead at this point, according to sources.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:06 AM on December 5, 2024

appears to match a B&T VP9, an update of the Welrod pistol

Nah, it just looks like a silenced semi-auto loaded with subsonic rounds. If you remember the climatic action scene in David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Frank Booth is operating his gun in the exact same way.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:15 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

Sure does sound like the ACA!

The ACA is part of the way there. But the Netherlands government also places limits on how much doctors and hospitals can charge and also makes it obligatory for everyone to pay into the system - including wealthy people who would otherwise use private doctors. So the system is funded and works for everyone, and works really well!

As for prescription drugs, the US is in its own league. When I lived in the UK I was struck by the humanity of the fact that prescription drugs were always free for a broad swath of people, including people with chronic conditions. I take a thyroid pill every day to regulate my metabolism. I need it. This was free because of course it is.
posted by vacapinta at 11:20 AM on December 5, 2024 [28 favorites]

A longtime employee of UnitedHealthcare said that workers at the company had been aware for years that members were unhappy. Mr. Thompson was one of the few executives who wanted to do something about it, said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the company does not allow workers to speak publicly without permission.

Hey, I can believe that in his heart, he's wasn't a real life version of 'Mr Burns' hell bent on denying health to all his customers. But there's a real disconnect between his mission of maximizing profits and those sentiments. The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding stank. He may have meant well, but clearly he lacked the conviction to prioritize those wishes and turn them into actions and results when that meant they would generate less profit.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:20 AM on December 5, 2024 [6 favorites]

For those saying they’ve had good experiences with UHC coverage for mental health, that’s because UHC hasn’t gone after your provider yet. But they will, because they have years to claw back their reimbursements to providers.

After UHC was repeatedly caught illegally interfering with patient care, they have largely shifted towards clawing back payments from providers.

Staying in a UHC plan puts your provider at risk. Leave if you can.
posted by Headfullofair at 11:23 AM on December 5, 2024 [15 favorites]

As for prescription drugs, the US is in its own league. When I lived in the UK I was struck by the humanity of the fact that prescription drugs were always free for a broad swath of people, including people with chronic conditions. I take a thyroid pill every day to regulate my metabolism. I need it. This was free because of course it is.

I still remember when I was a master's student living in Poland for a month, and I made an appointment to get some prescriptions refilled. The doctor I saw gave me the refills, but explained very apologetically that because the insurance I had through my master's program was from the Netherlands, it would not be able to directly cover the cost of the prescriptions. Instead--and I really can't emphasize enough how sorry the doctor was to be telling me this--I would have to pay for the refills out of my own pocket and submit a reimbursement to the insurance company separately.

Reader, the out-of-pocket total cost of the three or four prescriptions without any insurance was the equivalent of 15 USD.

Somehow I managed to pay it anyway.
posted by Gadarene at 11:25 AM on December 5, 2024 [22 favorites]

(Oh, and the doctor's appointment itself was free, of course, and I made it one day in advance.)
posted by Gadarene at 11:30 AM on December 5, 2024 [10 favorites]

Didn't they write ironic messages on the bombs dropped during World War II or is that something Kubrick invented for Dr. Strangelove?

If you mean the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, I don't know, but it was and still is a thing.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:40 AM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

wow metafilter has a real problem with voicing class genocidal attitudes against health insurance ceos

first they came for the health insurance ceos and i said nothing because I wasn't a health insurance ceo, folks

but also i'm worried about what this means for industry trends, deaths for united healthcare members should be done by ai per their policies, not high doses of injectable lead

i also feel really sorry for the witnesses, i'm sure seeing something as traumatic as a murder first hand means they'll need mental health care, which is routinely denied or minimized by insurance companies like united healthcare

sorry about all the jokes, it's almost at the end of the year and i want to make sure i get all of them in since the deductible's already been hit
posted by i used to be someone else at 11:46 AM on December 5, 2024 [27 favorites]

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick, and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it—in harmony—they may think they're both [bleep] and they won't take either of 'em. And three people do it—three, can you imagine?—three people walking in, shooting an American health insurance company executive, and walking out?—they may think it's an organization. And can you—can you imagine fifty people a day—I said fifty people a day!—walkin' in, shooting an American health insurance company executive, and walkin' out. And friends, they may think it's a movement!
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:55 AM on December 5, 2024 [21 favorites]

Ken Klippenstein: "No shit murder is bad. The jokes about the United CEO aren't really about him; they're about the rapacious healthcare system he personified and which Americans feel deep pain and humiliation about."
posted by AlSweigart at 11:57 AM on December 5, 2024 [19 favorites]

is putting your cryptic manifesto on assassination bullet casings an existing idea (either in real life or fiction)

Brief lists of Marked Bullets & Designated Bullets on TVTropes
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:58 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

I just saw his new photos, and he is extremely photogenic, which will definitely help him on Twitter and Tumblr if not IRL
posted by Countess Elena at 12:05 PM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

Brief lists of Marked Bullets & Designated Bullets on TVTropes

Appropriately left off those lists is the Audie Murphy classic, No Name on the Bullet.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:05 PM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

Any man’s death diminishes me, but some more than others.
posted by Lemkin at 12:08 PM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

The truly appalling thing about murders like this is that they change nothing, all they--oh, hold on one moment (touches earpiece).

Comptroller: Anthem no longer implementing time limit for anesthesia coverage in Connecticut

posted by mittens at 12:11 PM on December 5, 2024 [61 favorites]

I had an inkling today about exactly why everyone's least favorite social media owner has been hanging around everyone's least favorite president. Money can't buy that level of protection.

Considering the least favourite president evaded a high velocity heavy metal injection to the brain pan by a couple inches recently I'm not sure of the wisdom in that plan.
posted by Mitheral at 12:13 PM on December 5, 2024 [6 favorites]

@isaacfitzgerald.bsky.social‬: It’s gonna be really sad when we Milkshake Duck this murderer.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:13 PM on December 5, 2024 [11 favorites]

The thing that gets me: if you look at UHN's financials, they have a 3 percent profit margin. After all the denials, paperwork and other stunts they pulled, it's still incredibly slim. On the surface at least, this looks like a tragically high stakes version of TicketMaster: a middleman company paid to take the bad PR of high prices charged by venues and promoters. Like, if their rejection rate dropped from 33% to BCBS's 17%, I gotta wonder how quickly they'd close up shop.

In case anybody was wondering how the moneyed class was taking the news.

All the big companies -- I too was surprised to learn UHN had a half trillion dollar market cap! -- have succession plans, for these sort of scenarios. If they didn't crack open the succession plan folder at this moment, it would make folks wonder what else a huge company in the business of planning for medical emergencies didn't do.
posted by pwnguin at 12:15 PM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

Isn't profit what they get after paying their CEO $23.5 million?
posted by Chrysopoeia at 12:20 PM on December 5, 2024 [18 favorites]

Apparently they've had an average of 1.068B in stock buybacks per quarter for the last five years.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 12:27 PM on December 5, 2024 [27 favorites]

Just saw the no mask photo. If this dude is as smart as he seems he skates. The pass line will win more often than two eyewitnessness fail contradict each other on that face. And that's all he needs.

This is assuming, you know, he's caught.
posted by East14thTaco at 12:30 PM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

As someone who not too long ago had to memorize roughly 130 undergrad faces per semester....he's blessed with "generic white guy face."

An hour ago Bernie tweeted:

"We waste hundreds of billions a year on health care administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured.

Health care is a human right.

We need Medicare for All."

(And yes, this is technically a response to an Elon Musk tweet complaining about healthcare costs - personally I'm enjoying Bernie calling their bluff on being populists)
posted by coffeecat at 12:40 PM on December 5, 2024 [22 favorites]

Everyone wants to complain about how much doctors salaries are, but pay has been pretty close to flat with inflation since the 90’s while the debt to go to medical school has gone up exponentially. As for the anesthesia time, that sort of thing kills hospitals who see complex patients like academic centers and safety net tertiary care centers like county hospitals. Nobody wants long OR times. Aside from fatigue for everyone in the room, complication rate goes up, you make less money due to increased costs rather turning over the room to have as many procedures as possible. It is literally a pure money grab from the insurance company.
posted by roguewraith at 1:10 PM on December 5, 2024 [18 favorites]

100%. Every single person in the OR is silently begging their god for mercy during the third hour of a laparoscopic cholecystectomy.
posted by jesourie at 1:17 PM on December 5, 2024 [15 favorites]

I guess I just don’t get the point. UHC is gonna keep denying claims this weekend if they haven’t started already. It still feels like empty symbolism.
posted by girlmightlive at 1:28 PM on December 5, 2024

I guess I just don’t get the point... It still feels like empty symbolism.

It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:41 PM on December 5, 2024 [15 favorites]

I consider this event the same way MLK considered riots.

Yes, it was a bad thing and shouldn't happen, but also inevitable as a reaction to greater evils that should be addressed.
posted by charred husk at 1:43 PM on December 5, 2024 [40 favorites]

What'a a Life Worth?

What we’re called to ask is why the murder of one man must be described as unspeakable violence, but the systemic denial of life to 100,000 people is an acceptable business practice. We’re called to ask why profiting from the denial of life earns a person millions while the people denied care ought to accept drowning in debt and disease. We’re called to ask why only certain lives are precious, and only in certain circumstances. Why does playing by the rules render someone innocent, even when the rules produce a stream of death and devastation?

posted by hydropsyche at 1:55 PM on December 5, 2024 [39 favorites]

Isn't profit what they get after paying their CEO $23.5 million?

Probably a bit more than that, considering the payroll will be thinner (albeit temporarily).
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:02 PM on December 5, 2024

It still feels like empty symbolism.

in an important sense this was an action, nothing symbolic about it. the shooter's gun didn't issue a funny flag with the word "BANG" on it, he ended the other person's life

it's only in the commentary of web forums (and what's emptier than that) that people seem to be looking for symbolism
posted by ginger.beef at 2:06 PM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

“Do you understand what I'm saying?" shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!"

"Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm.

"What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?"

"I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.

"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"

"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”

― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

(This guy murdered a lot more than 2.338 people.)
posted by dmd at 2:13 PM on December 5, 2024 [41 favorites]

Yes, it was a bad thing and shouldn't happen, but also inevitable as a reaction to greater evils that should be addressed.

Since hearing about this and seeing the reaction here and elsewhere, I've had in mind a bit from one of the Broken Earth books (no spoilers). There's a section talking about violence as a reaction to social ills, and it draws an analogy to a city wall that's built along an active geologic fault. Eventually, that wall falls and probably kills a bunch of people when it collapses. But the correct response isn't to get angry at the wall for killing people - that was just a natural and predictable result of the wall being built how and where it was. Rather, the anger should be directed at the people who chose to build their wall across a fault line, thereby creating the conditions for the inevitable collapse.
posted by nickmark at 2:14 PM on December 5, 2024 [10 favorites]

the shooter's gun didn't issue a funny flag with the word "BANG" on it, he ended the other person's life

Deaths of despair go both ways.
posted by Lemkin at 3:05 PM on December 5, 2024

Mod note: We've added mephron's note about fighting back in healthcare denials to the sidebar and Best of blog. Because that's how it it in the states these days.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 3:25 PM on December 5, 2024 [37 favorites]

From the NYT:

“A longtime employee of UnitedHealthcare said that workers at the company had been aware for years that members were unhappy. Mr. Thompson was one of the few executives who wanted to do something about it, said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the company does not allow workers to speak publicly without permission.

In speeches to employees, Mr. Thompson spoke about the need to change the state of health care coverage in the country and the culture of the company, topics other executives avoided, the employee said.”

What if he angered someone inside the company?
posted by bendy at 3:48 PM on December 5, 2024 [6 favorites]

For people getting these denials, rahaeli on Bluesky had a thread that was both interesting and helpful, and should be spread far and wide:


ProPublica also has a tool that will help you write a letter to ask for this information.
posted by adrienneleigh at 4:26 PM on December 5, 2024 [45 favorites]

It certainly possible that the shooter was there to kill the first high-level exec that they saw headed through the side door, isn't it?

Except i don't think there was any reason for a rando to assume that any exec would be going in and out through the side door? Normally the people using the side/back doors are event staff and low-level helpers, not the bigwigs.
posted by adrienneleigh at 4:27 PM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield reverses decision to put a time limit on anesthesia

Wow. That petition and letter writing campaign must have finally worked.

We should do more of them.
posted by AlSweigart at 4:35 PM on December 5, 2024 [31 favorites]

All previous posters who said this wouldn’t change anything identity yourselves and apologize.

[Raises hand] It me.

I'm not really happy about it taking an actual, um, [checks notes] murder in the streets-- wow, that's sure something, huh?-- to draw attention to how fucking awful for-profit healthcare has become, but it turns out that it's super effective. Somehow "poor people are angry and dying" doesn't get traction^* the way "people are openly celebrating the murder of this CEO" does. And watching the NYPD pouring several orders of magnitude more resources into this than, say, anyone else's murder isn't really chilling people out, either.

^*jk, traction isn't covered
posted by phooky at 4:42 PM on December 5, 2024 [10 favorites]

Assuming the shooter's motive was a serious legit grievance with UHC, then I have mixed feelings on this.

Vigilante justice is problematic, to say the least. Absolutely the option of last resort.

OTOH, there are few human enterprises I loathe and despise and wish (metaphorically) dead more than the malignant metastasising parasite that is the private health insurance industry. It is one of the greatest and cruelest scams of all time.

So let's just say that I can neither condone nor condemn the actions of the shooter.

Destroy enough peoples' future, and endlessly rub their faces in it from a position of great wealth and privilege, then all the security in the world will not protect you from their righteous fury when it boils over.
posted by Pouteria at 5:03 PM on December 5, 2024 [8 favorites]

I've been reading this interview with Richard Seymour about his book Disaster Nationalism, and I wish I could quote the whole thing because I think it really gets into why people feel so energized about this killing.

"...it seems to me that the left, possibly on one hand, should be a bit less frightened of dark emotions. To some extent, part of what we need to be doing is provoking the death drive and directing it in a more productive way. The death drive is not a good or a bad thing, it's just basically a rejection of the self that you've come to know. It destroys itself. So it basically poses a question of, never mind appeasing other people, never mind what you're supposed to want—given that you've reached this point, this impasse, and given how bad things are, what do you really want? What would you like? And let's see what we can do about that.

"I finish on the idea that really, it's not about bread and butter. We like bread and butter. We need bread and butter. It's a good thing, but we don't love it. If you love your children, you don't love them because they increase your free time and energy and money. They absolutely do not do any of that. They do the opposite. The things that people love are the things that they sacrifice for. And so essentially, we've got to think about, what is it that people are prepared to sacrifice for? We found that people are prepared to sacrifice things for Brexit. If we stop patronizing people saying, we'll give you bread—we'll give you a bit more money in your pocket—and talk about, what is it that you would actually be willing to die for? I think we'll get further along, organizing in that direction."
posted by mittens at 5:05 PM on December 5, 2024 [20 favorites]

Hopefully that can indicate a path where USA can join Japan as contemporary millennial society #2 to take positive advantage of an assassination (that was followed up by journalism of LDP corruption, public sharing of how much the cult Abe was involved in hurt people and robbed their savings, and just jokes that diminished the cultural hold over talking about the cult or the party).

Anthropologically too, this seems common enough that plenty of cultures have either customs or references that if not allowed it, identified this as consequences of an elite betrayal of the social contract. I've mentioned amuk/amok before because it's a maritime Southeast Asian (Malay for me) concept and what it means. In English it seems to carry the meaning of going crazy or berserk simply. It actually means being violent in public in the absence of a successful peaceful way to get justice from elites. That last part is always missing. This guy wasn't 100% amok though because the usual victims are unrelated members of the public, but he's definitely "mengamuk" (in amuk phase). I know Korean culture have something similar as well - feels like an active undercurrent in a lot of their vengeance media.
posted by cendawanita at 5:06 PM on December 5, 2024 [77 favorites]

I'm glad you showed up cendawanita

you've managed to put it in such a way that even the most tiresome scold will have a hard time tsking it dismissively
posted by ginger.beef at 5:13 PM on December 5, 2024 [15 favorites]

All the talk of how this guy was one of the good ones, he was advocating for patients internally (according to a very anonymous source). But somehow, in the three years he was in charge, profits went up by four billion dollars, a 33% increase. Not sure there's any way that's possible without taking at least a good chunk of it out of your customers, one way or another.
posted by Dysk at 5:16 PM on December 5, 2024 [35 favorites]

OTOH, there are few human enterprises I loathe and despise and wish (metaphorically) dead more than the malignant metastasising parasite that is the private health insurance industry.
posted by Pouteria

At least the for-profit section of it. Non-profit might be a different story.
posted by Pouteria at 5:21 PM on December 5, 2024 [3 favorites]

you've managed to put it in such a way that even the most tiresome scold will have a hard time tsking it dismissively
posted by ginger.beef at 8:13 PM on December 5 [+] [⚑]

This is Metafilter, don't sell us short!
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 5:21 PM on December 5, 2024 [13 favorites]

Dont Politicize the Shooting of a Healtcare CEO
posted by East14thTaco at 5:27 PM on December 5, 2024 [10 favorites]

Did I miss the discussion of this possibly being the shooting of a witness due to investigation UnitedHealthCare's being investigated for insider trading? And their Medicare advantage ineptness finally coming home tom roost even as that program might get privatized? Sure, the angry ot is better headline but there are plenty of other people who wanted him gone.
posted by beaning at 5:31 PM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

you've managed to put it in such a way that even the most tiresome scold will have a hard time tsking it dismissively

Well, I'm just sharing.... I'm sympathetic as well to the perturbed feeling that people seems to be celebrating even if I don't immediately feel it - but the other component to social violence like amuk is that it tends to takes place in deeply hierarchical societies with a lot of high-context communications, where it genuinely means there's an institutional breakdown if this is the step taken. And that's possibly where the disconnect is happening, because I don't think Americans have a shared view about their society being so entrenchedly hierarchical so if you consider social mobility and equality to be more of a fact, it's more likely that you consider a CEO to be "one of us", so this is a tragic murder. It really can happen to you.

Can it though?

But I'm also in the middle of listening to the audiobook version of Goliath, and I have to admit, historically American elites have a very thorough case of running roughshod over the "lesser" people it seems. Over here, the insurance industry was feeling some kind of way about its chances and just successfully floated the idea of co-pays and with it a rise in premium. People complained. Now there's a change to the policy. I'm super-summarizing it for this thread but there does seem to be a cultural difference in elite responsiveness. I guess the culture that loaned the word amuk to English would produce a different kind of risk mindset in their betters.
posted by cendawanita at 5:41 PM on December 5, 2024 [17 favorites]

“one of the few executives who wanted to do something about” inequities in health insurance and “spoke about the need to change the state of health care coverage in the country and the culture of the company, topics other executives avoided.”

Utter tosh. I don't think you become a UHC CEO because of your heartfelt desire to do something about the inequities in health insurance, unless that something is to exacerbate them in the name of profit. Much the same way as nobody has ever thought "I'll fight racism by joining the KKK and working to change it from the inside."
posted by axiom at 5:51 PM on December 5, 2024 [35 favorites]

Did I miss the discussion of this possibly being the shooting of a witness due to investigation UnitedHealthCare's being investigated for insider trading?

Brian Thompson himself was at the centre of those accusations, so it could be someone trying to silence a co-conspirator, but it's a hell of a whitewash to call him a "witness" when he was a suspect.
posted by Dysk at 6:06 PM on December 5, 2024 [14 favorites]

Mod note: Comment removed. Let's not explicitly praise violence.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:07 PM on December 5, 2024

Isn't some violence praiseworthy? Not saying this is or isn't, but it's definitely debatable.

Unless this site has decided on committed pacifism as a rule, I guess.
posted by sagc at 6:12 PM on December 5, 2024 [20 favorites]

Let's not explicitly praise violence.

fuck the guidelines
posted by glonous keming at 6:12 PM on December 5, 2024 [24 favorites]

Am I wrong, or does the photos that got released look like a different backpack than the killer was wearing? Maybe it's color correction I guess, but those photos of the smiling guy are all with what looks like a dark backpack.
posted by Carillon at 6:22 PM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

Also, possibly related, he's a big cutie
posted by knobknosher at 6:34 PM on December 5, 2024 [14 favorites]

The first and second rounds of suspect photos REALLY do not appear to be the same person?
First photos = black jacket with no pockets, grey backpack, light eyelashes, pink skin.
Second photos = khaki jacket with pockets, black backpack, dark eyelashes, olive skin.
They don't look at all the same to me, it's puzzling.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 6:37 PM on December 5, 2024 [10 favorites]

Looking at it, I don't feel confident saying much about colours because of how different the balance visibly is between sources, except to say that it looks very clear that one of the "unmasked" photos shows backpack straps significantly darker than the jacket, whereas the masked pictures (including shooting) show backpack straps significantly lighter than the jacket they're over. Maybe someone with some expertise in photography or imagining can explain that discrepancy though? I also see breast pockets on the unmasked guy, but not any of the masked pictures - maybe due to blurring or poor image quality?

I'm not an expert, happy to entertain the notion that there's good explanations for it, but it sure looks like some big discrepancies to my eye.
posted by Dysk at 6:47 PM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

After the way UHC treated my dad - denying him rehab funds after heart surgery, essentially leaving him to die - even my mother, an 80something devout Catholic (in the good, "Jesus forgives everyone" way) and former nurse who wants no harm to come to anyone, is not wasting any tears on this dude.
posted by Lyme Drop at 6:49 PM on December 5, 2024 [31 favorites]

Every new detail that comes out makes him seem cooler than the last. And that smile?? Get outta here!
posted by knotty knots at 6:56 PM on December 5, 2024 [9 favorites]

Not to alarm anyone but he looks like Justin Trudeau to me...
posted by cendawanita at 6:59 PM on December 5, 2024 [7 favorites]

CNN is reporting that the backstory of the image where he's smiling: "among the interviews law enforcement has been conducting, they spoke to a female employee at the hostel who said, at one point, she asked the then-masked man to lower his mask while flirting with him, which is when this photo released by NYPD today was taken." (source is a tweet from a CNN reporter)

Also in news: healthcare companies have started taking down their online leadership pages.
posted by coffeecat at 7:01 PM on December 5, 2024 [11 favorites]

CNN is reporting that the backstory of the image where he's smiling: "among the interviews law enforcement has been conducting, they spoke to a female employee at the hostel who said, at one point, she asked the then-masked man to lower his mask while flirting with him, which is when this photo released by NYPD today was taken."

FFS, Justin. Given the polling at home, doesn't this all feel a little desperate for affirmation?
posted by maudlin at 7:14 PM on December 5, 2024 [10 favorites]

Those seem to be different jackets (pocket v. no pockets). Also, the NYPD seems likely to either never find the guy or try to prosecute the wrong guy.
posted by emjaybee at 7:29 PM on December 5, 2024 [11 favorites]

just speaking for myself, my reaction comes from being in midtown Manhattan all the time: the prospect of masked vigilantes running around and slaying people on the sidewalk is not a pleasant one. It feels less symbolic when it's basically in your backyard, and then it's just gun violence and a dead guy. Is it worse than the routine gun violence enacted in America? Well, not really. It's very bad that we've seemingly become inured to it though.

If we're going to do anything about housing prices healthcare costs we need more YIMBYs.
posted by zymil at 7:41 PM on December 5, 2024 [5 favorites]

The Starbucks photos look entirely different. It's not even the same hood.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:44 PM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

Surveillance footage of the suspect in Central Park
posted by phunniemee at 8:50 PM on December 5, 2024 [18 favorites]

Okay, but what if that violence is rad as hell, like a chain fight between street gangs, or a deathmatch in the Walled City of Kowloon
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:08 PM on December 5, 2024 [9 favorites]

Comment removed. Let's not explicitly praise violence

Come on, this is the most unifying thing to happen on Metafilter in ages!
posted by corb at 9:36 PM on December 5, 2024 [45 favorites]

Many bad people have families. Sometimes their families even love them.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:50 PM on December 5, 2024

It's definitely not "stochastic" in any sense. It's clearly targeted. Stochasm doesn't just mean "general any old day violence from young men" it means "random". This wasn't random.

This is a misunderstanding of the term stochastic terrorism. It's not about violence that targets random people. That's just terrorism. Stochastic terrorism is when Elon Musk posts on Twitter the name of some government employee he doesn't like, knowing that out of his millions of followers some of them will harass that person. He technically didn't ask any particular person to harass her, but he bears moral (and, in a just world, legal) responsibility for the statistically near-certain outcome of his actions.

If an insurance executive denies medical care to a large enough number of people, then statistically there's some chance that one of them will murder him. This is known as fucking around and stochastically finding out.
posted by straight at 11:04 PM on December 5, 2024 [31 favorites]

Thanks vacapinta, interesting to hear feedback from someone who actually lives in the Netherlands (I'm also in Europe so a little behind on this thread).

As for prescription drugs, the US is in its own league.

Oh yes. We don't qualify for Swedish healthcare (long story) so I have to submit receipts to our US insurer and get reimbursed. I've had issues with drug reimbursements due to a technical issue (they obscure the drug name on receipts, presumably for privacy reasons) but the cost, WITHOUT insurance, is so low it's not even worth the hassle. A drug that would cost hundreds in the US per month is like $15 here.
posted by photo guy at 11:29 PM on December 5, 2024 [11 favorites]

> Assassination Politics 2: This Time It's Oligarchs

that's what i was thinking, an embiggening dead pool, but after the casings, it sounds more like an abe hit.*

> We need Medicare for All.

hopefully dr. "medicare advantage for all" oz is taking notes...
posted by kliuless at 1:23 AM on December 6, 2024 [2 favorites]

How many people died because of this guy? The old tired cliche of would you go back in time and kill Hitler if you could? These are mass murderers. If Elmo gets his way how many Americans that rely on social services will die from his evisceration of said social services for massive tax cuts that benefit him? He's another mass murderer in the making. When is enough enough? Well, someone decided that they did not need a time machine. He will be easily replaced, but I think here what happens when you are literally being murdered on a massive scale. At what point do you challenge the baleful, murderous exigencies of late model capitalism?
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 2:12 AM on December 6, 2024 [6 favorites]

To see if this CEO was a healthcare advocate look at his company’s denial rates.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:36 AM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

Has anyone mentioned the film John Q?

John Q. is a 2002 American thriller drama film written by James Kearns and directed by Nick Cassavetes. It stars Denzel Washington as the title character, a man who takes a hospital emergency room hostage in order for his son to receive a heart transplant.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:04 AM on December 6, 2024 [7 favorites]

My morning coffee thought is that the fact that insurance executives aren't assassinated regularly is proof that the conservative world-view that people are inherently bad is incorrect.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:06 AM on December 6, 2024 [9 favorites]

The Failure of Nonviolence by Peter Gelderloos
posted by jeffburdges at 4:53 AM on December 6, 2024 [2 favorites]

When judging actions, there is a difference between praiseworthy and necessary.
posted by delfin at 5:27 AM on December 6, 2024 [2 favorites]

They didn't even suspend trading on the stock.

Shooting happened before market hours, so information was already widely available before (regular) trading started. Might have made sense to suspend trading for 15 minutes or so if this happened during trading hours, but would not have made any sense in this case.
posted by zeikka at 5:36 AM on December 6, 2024 [2 favorites]

The Failure of Nonviolence by Peter Gelderloos


This guy can fuck off for his disrespect for the Ukrainian revolution.
posted by ocschwar at 6:15 AM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

The way health insurance "works" in the US is one of the main reasons I will never move back to the US and the spectre of privatized healthcare looming over Ontario is one of the main reasons I go to healthcare protests.
posted by Kitteh at 6:15 AM on December 6, 2024 [17 favorites]

In today's NYC murder news which I scraped from Gothamist and NY Post because NYTimes is no longer a New York paper - two teens stabbed in the Financial District (one died). Multiday manhunt covered by all news sources? Not likely.

And major newspapers and executives wonder at the vitriol of netizens.....
posted by ichimunki at 6:35 AM on December 6, 2024 [7 favorites]

My morning coffee thought is that the fact that insurance executives aren't assassinated regularly is proof that the conservative world-view that people are inherently bad is incorrect.

Exactly! I was just saying this to someone like a day ago: That whole memetic right-wing idea that common sense and common courtesy supposedly no longer exist and we just need to go back to them is completely blown out of the water by the fact that this doesn't happen every day. We've all been here, observing decorum, motherfuckers! This is what it really looks like if even one person doesn't! We've all been here, taking personal responsibility for gigantic societal problems that aren't ours. Imagine what things might be like if we all refused to take personal responsibility for these burdens and crushing defeats that aren't of our own making and have nothing to do with us.
posted by limeonaire at 7:22 AM on December 6, 2024 [26 favorites]

Some of the news coverage is shifting towards noting that larger insurance companies are now beefing up security for their executives and CEOs, at what sounds like great cost.

I can't help but wonder why it doesn't occur to them that they likely would be better off if they conducted business in such a way that people wouldn't want to kill their executives and CEOs in the first place.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:28 AM on December 6, 2024 [22 favorites]

Thank you all for this thread, it's been extremely cathartic to read. I've been wishing for various people to HAVE A NICE TIME for ages, and now that it's happened, it's heartening to see it having a positive effect.

Obviously it's a shame it's come to this, but it was always going to happen. It reminds me of the early twentieth century. Best not to think too hard on how that ended up. Assassination as a political tool rarely works out in the long run, but it's what you get, and the fear of it might be enough to drive change.

You get further with a kind word and a gun, than with just a kind word. I can't believe I'm quoting Capone, but there it goes.
posted by Acey at 7:35 AM on December 6, 2024 [13 favorites]

Come on, this is the most unifying thing to happen on Metafilter in ages!

Not just Metafilter, I was visiting r/Conservative and LinkedIn and it was even unifying there. This is the most unifying thing to happen to America in ages.
posted by clawsoon at 7:47 AM on December 6, 2024 [41 favorites]

fact that insurance executives aren't assassinated regularly

That he killed him and didn't just horribly maim him and subject him to a lifetime of UHC's care and service is also proof! His family only gets subjected to BIG CASKET, but not both.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:47 AM on December 6, 2024 [8 favorites]

Turns out Brian Thompson wasn't a great guy.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:27 AM on December 6, 2024 [2 favorites]

@prettyliltakemachine.is-extremely.gay‬: It's important to lead your life in such a way that when you're gunned down in public by an anonymous hitman on a New York City street the country at large doesn't react like the Ewoks watching the second Death Star explode.
posted by Wordshore at 8:27 AM on December 6, 2024 [68 favorites]

> Imagine what things might be like if we all refused to take personal responsibility for these burdens and crushing defeats that aren't of our own making and have nothing to do with us.

you can look at assassination politics as one way of policing the commons -- or 'closing the loop' (as it were) on negative externalities (which capitalism offloads onto the public to "take personal responsibility for"). this is what elinor ostrom (rip) won a nobel prize for:

1. give everyone entitled to use commons[1,2] a say in running them;
2. set clear boundaries to keep out those who are not entitled;
3. appoint monitors who are trusted by users; and
4. have straightforward mechanisms to resolve conflicts.

> Assassination as a political tool rarely works out in the long run, but it's what you get, and the fear of it might be enough to drive change.

i mean, in the course of human events, might generally does make right,[3] killers go free -- and win.
posted by kliuless at 8:42 AM on December 6, 2024 [14 favorites]

WaPo: The UnitedHealthcare CEO was killed. Why did some people celebrate?
“I think the leaders of the industry should look at this and ask: Why does everybody hate us so much that when one of us gets killed in an assassination … we’re not hearing sympathy from the general public — we’re hearing scorn?” Holt said."
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:46 AM on December 6, 2024 [9 favorites]

Turns out Brian Thompson wasn't a great guy.

Thank you, Celebitchy.com, for helping untangle the knotted web of motives leading to this guy's assassination. Was it because he was in charge of the largest and cruelest health insurance cabal in America? Or was it because he received a DUI in Minnesota seven years ago? We may never know.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 8:49 AM on December 6, 2024 [23 favorites]

I've done all I can to avoid indulging in the gallows humor and meme spreading for this murder, but one thing that should chill the blood of every public safety official and every health insurance executive:

I feel safer and I AM safer today because of this murder.

The killer's motivations are pretty clear at this point, and he took care not to let a stray bullet from his gun hit anyone. I am honestly not afraid of him and for good objective reasons.

The stabbing of those teenagers scares me more than(see above) the murder of Thompson because it is something more likely to happen to me. As is UHC's record of misconduct.
posted by ocschwar at 8:54 AM on December 6, 2024 [12 favorites]

Turns out Brian Thompson wasn't a great guy.

Yeah I dunno, the only part of that that really seems to be clear documentation of a problem on his part is the DWI. Like no doubt something happened in his marriage to lead them to be living apart, but judging him on that front without more information is a bit othering to anyone who's been separated long-term for various reasons...such as, for instance, staying technically married so their spouse or family could stay on their insurance, which seems entirely possible here and would be super ironic, as noted above. Alcoholism is a disease, not a personal moral failing. Separation is a valid choice in response to intractable problems, not a personal moral failing.

Like he was cancelable—and was permanently canceled—for his complicity in killing people via denial of claims, if the bullet messages are any indication. That's enough to say he wasn't a good guy. It seems important for us to collectively be clear on what is and isn't a cancelable offense, and being an alcoholic and getting separated really shouldn't be cancelable offenses.
posted by limeonaire at 9:11 AM on December 6, 2024 [8 favorites]

I saw a TikTok today that said something like: "In a perfect world, we wouldn't be cheering on vigilante justice. But we don't have Coke, so Pepsi's fine."
posted by mhum at 9:26 AM on December 6, 2024 [12 favorites]

Not just Metafilter, I was visiting r/Conservative and LinkedIn

I work in corporate health care* and my LinkedIn is fully of executives being APPALLED DISGUSTED and DEEPLY SADDENED and HOW DARE

Interesting to hear that folks in other industries might be seeing something different - I figured LinkedIn would be full of people ignoring it.

*Three years ago a I joined a really cool midsize company that was helping rural hospitals and docs stay afloat. It was bought and then the buyer was bought and here I am working for a healthcare mega company - something I thought I would never do.
posted by jeoc at 9:31 AM on December 6, 2024 [13 favorites]

I was thinking the insider trading stuff didn't sound too great.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:31 AM on December 6, 2024 [6 favorites]

Ah yeah, that too!
posted by limeonaire at 9:32 AM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

> Not to alarm anyone but he looks like Justin Trudeau to me...

I'm pretty sure it's Timothée Chalamet, but I do see your point of view.
posted by atbash at 9:47 AM on December 6, 2024 [3 favorites]

Alcoholism is a disease, not a personal moral failing.

Sure, but operating a vehicle on public roads or with anyone else in the car when you're impaired is indeed a personal moral failing and that's a hill I'll die on, sorry.
posted by phunniemee at 9:47 AM on December 6, 2024 [16 favorites]

> Stochastic terrorism is when Elon Musk posts on Twitter the name of some government employee he doesn't like, knowing that out of his millions of followers some of them will harass that person.

The reason people have trouble figuring out what "stochastic terrorism" means is that the term was invented by someone, and then picked up by more people, who don't understand that this is also *just* terrorism. This is exactly how, for example, Islamic terrorism in the 1980s worked: an Imam issues a fatwa that says someone has done some heresy, and an unrelated person who has been roped in to this by whatever means, be it political rhetoric, religious brainwashing, old fashioned duress, or whatever motivation does the deed.
posted by atbash at 9:56 AM on December 6, 2024

Even if he had been the absolute best of men, his death would still be cheered and jeered!

I can't help but wonder why it doesn't occur to them that they likely would be better off if they conducted business in such a way that people wouldn't want to kill their executives and CEOs in the first place.

I think in order for things to actually get better and change, the state will have to step in and (heavily) regulate the market. What we're seeing in the US healthcare industry (on every level, from pharmaceuticals, to hospitals, to insurers) is Capitalism's propensity for unlimited, unfettered, cancerous growth. The market isn't self correcting on a systemic level, that's absolute nonsense, imo.
posted by nikoniko at 10:00 AM on December 6, 2024 [7 favorites]

Interesting to hear that folks in other industries might be seeing something different - I figured LinkedIn would be full of people ignoring it.

It's showing up in the comments and reactions rather than the posts themselves, from what I've seen.
posted by clawsoon at 10:10 AM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

Reddit and the like are rejoicing, but i can’t imagine the performative public asskissing that LinkedIn rewards would brook anything less than thoughts and prayers. “Ha ha, die trash” doesn’t look great when it’s under your name linked to your employer.
posted by dr_dank at 10:20 AM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

Moderators Across Social Media Struggle to Contain Celebrations of UnitedHealthcare CEO’s Assassination:

On Facebook, UnitedHealth Group locked comments on its post mourning the death of its “dear friend and colleague,” but it couldn’t block people from reacting with emojis, which more than 73,000 have so far with the crying-laughing face (compared to around 2,400 doing a sad face).

posted by /\/\/\/ at 10:22 AM on December 6, 2024 [22 favorites]

No boss, what you gotta understand is I was practicing my German. My LinkedIn post actually says "the, trash, the."
posted by phunniemee at 10:23 AM on December 6, 2024 [28 favorites]

Sure, but operating a vehicle on public roads or with anyone else in the car when you're impaired is indeed a personal moral failing and that's a hill I'll die on, sorry.

Also, it would be trivially easy for this guy to choose to never ever drive a vehicle. It's not like a cab, a Lyft, or a full-time personal driver was going to make a dent in his net worth. He certainly had a lot more options than many alcoholics do.
posted by creepygirl at 10:42 AM on December 6, 2024 [8 favorites]

“Ha ha, die trash” doesn’t look great when it’s under your name linked to your employer.

Unless your employer also feels the same way about UnitedHealthcare or health insurance in general.

I've worked at mid-sized companies where everyone from the office admin to the CEO has essentially the same health insurance plan because group buying is not only a thing, it's an essential part of what makes health insurance work (at least prior to the ACA).
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:42 AM on December 6, 2024 [3 favorites]

Although this kind of economically, or politically/ideologically motivated violence may not currently be as common here in the USA, where there are generally other avenues available for the settling of disagreements and disputes, or just to silence people, it does happen somewhat regularly.

How many whistleblowers/informants end up mysteriously dead? There is a witness protection program for a reason. (the recent Boeing deaths come to mind)
The two Trump attempts
How many BLM activists ended up mysteriously dead? (I recall it being more than a few)
Oklahoma City
How many civil rights activists in the 60s were assassinated? (MLK, Malcolm X, etc. SPLC has a civil rights martyrs page)
Then, obviously there's RFK, and JFK etc.
posted by nikoniko at 10:45 AM on December 6, 2024 [11 favorites]

He was no angel, that's for sure.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:50 AM on December 6, 2024 [11 favorites]

I'm not a gun guy but it looked almost like a welrod to me?

Tell me you're a Sniper Elite player without telling me you play Sniper Elite?
posted by achrise at 10:55 AM on December 6, 2024

The market isn't self correcting on a systemic level

Totally agreed, but I think this particularly industry is especially terrible because there isn't even a real market. Employers buying health insurance and bundling it as part of employees' compensation packages makes absolutely no goddamn sense, except that it's a convenient way for insurers to discreetly discriminate against less profitable customers.

It's really strange that employers haven't revolted against this system. It's costly to administer, it has nothing to do with the actual expertise of most businesses, and you end up monitoring compliance across millions of businesses instead of, what, ten insurance companies with meaningful market share?
posted by McBearclaw at 11:00 AM on December 6, 2024 [21 favorites]

100% Mc Bearclaw, the added cost and complexity is crazy other than as a leverage tactic
posted by djseafood at 11:08 AM on December 6, 2024 [3 favorites]

It's really strange that employers haven't revolted against this system.

It’s almost as if access to health insurance is literally the only thing preventing disruptive employee turnover at tons of businesses.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:08 AM on December 6, 2024 [37 favorites]

It’s almost as if access to health insurance is literally the only thing preventing disruptive employee turnover at tons of businesses.

But...does it? I mean, if you switch jobs, your new job will offer you a terrible insurance policy that's essentially the same as your current terrible insurance policy, often from the same company, right?
posted by mittens at 11:16 AM on December 6, 2024

It's really strange that employers haven't revolted against this system.

Complying with the law just involves hiring lawyers and following their counsel. It's cheap and easy, relatively speaking.

If you want to be amazed, look at how housing developers in the hotter markets in the East Coast haven't revolted against the zoning laws and insane permitting processes that prevail here. The process is costly, takes forever, is about as pleasant as a trip to the dentist. And yet.. they. Just. Comply. They could make billions more if the YIMBY activists trying to reform this dumpster fire prevail. Yet they leave the activism to activists.

So it's no surprise if every company for which health insurance is just a cost item treats it as just a cost item and doesn't try to reform it.
posted by ocschwar at 11:20 AM on December 6, 2024 [3 favorites]

Being able to search for a new job while still being employed at your old job is easy for certain white-collar jobs. Other jobs, not so much.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:21 AM on December 6, 2024 [11 favorites]

I have not lived with my husband for about 15 years. He is an exemplary human being and I’m not bad myself. It’s shitty that the dead guy had a DUI. His living conditions mean nothing. I am sorry that his kids may be old enough or will become old enough eventually to discover the massively hateful responses to their father’s death. But their dad was part of something monstrous, murderous, and fundamentally obscene. The fact that this system is tolerated in the United States does not make it less monstrous, less murderous, nor less obscene.
posted by Bella Donna at 11:24 AM on December 6, 2024 [16 favorites]

The hatred is as nigh-universal as it is because it's not JUST the fury one feels when their claim is denied and vital treatment becomes unavailable. It's because even when we're in the employer-subsidized comfortable category, it's a slow drip of increasing pain rather than a torrent.

I just helped my wife make her Open Enrollment decisions, for instance. At face value, there were no surprises -- the same employer-selected provider as last year, roughly the same variety of plans available at roughly the same cost, a brief webinar detailing any differences, a hefty subsidy provided towards the cost for the employee. That's how we Americans have come to understand that it's supposed to work, right?

Except that spouses have been completely unsubsidized by them for years now, so if she wanted to add me to her selected PPO plan, she'd be looking at something like $1200 a month additional. The bloodwork panel her GP asks for in her yearly checkup visit, something that used to be considered preventative care and subject only to a minimal copay, is now fully pre-deductible according to her provider and costs upwards of $500. The "market" isn't a market at all; you either take the provider that your employer gives you, or you try your luck paying full price on your own.

So, I'm not getting insurance through my wife's plan, the way I spent decades adding my wife to my own plan back when I was Big Corporation-employed. I'm an independent contractor now, and what that means is that the letter I just got from the government* telling me to check the ACA marketplace (with the quiet undercurrent in it of while you still can) sent me to find out, as usual, that I make too much money to qualify for even a minor subsidy. Even the entry-level policies, ones that would do essentially nothing for me outside of coverage if I get hit by a truck or contract some terrible disease, would be up in that same range after assistance.

And I'm not getting any younger, of course. I'm at an age in which I do need preventative care, I will need monitoring of certain areas for warning signs, and the likelihood of something serious going wrong IS increasing year-by-year. But that's the gamble, right? If I'm looking at $14k a year, I'm gazing back at a steady progression of previous years in which all I needed was a single $100-ish yearly checkup visit and an occasional prescription, and tough economic times are likely imminent, can I justify that kind of what-if outlay?

I asked my doctor on my last visit about a COVID booster. "Pretend that I'm homeless," I said, "because an independent contractor and a homeless person are roughly equivalent in the healthcare system. Where would you tell me to go for an affordable booster?" And he shrugged, helplessly, and suggested CVS (bill there == about $200 now that the Bridge Access Program has been discontinued).

I pay car insurance every month. I feel secure that if I smash my car up or someone smashes it up for me, the coverage will be there and I will get the repairs that I need. I feel no such assurances with regard to my own body or my wife's regardless of our health insurance status, and the price for that goes up every year.

And THAT is why I'm staring down at that guy on the floor and grinning.

* dear Government: please do not have the healthcare.gov letter come with INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE on the envelope, lest I soil myself twice before opening it. kthx
posted by delfin at 11:29 AM on December 6, 2024 [31 favorites]

I mean, if you switch jobs, your new job will offer you a terrible insurance policy that's essentially the same as your current terrible insurance policy, often from the same company, right?


Switching jobs, even if insurance is completely equivalent, means remeeting deductibles and may mean finding new providers and transferring prescriptions and records. A total PITA for anyone, and more so for those with complex needs.

And keep in mind that not all insurance will be equivalent when push comes to shove. Small employers are not even required to offer insurance, maternity care/birth control is often wildly variable.
posted by beaning at 11:31 AM on December 6, 2024 [20 favorites]

My employer has a pension plan, and a bunch of us have been around long enough that we're close to being able to retire. However, retiring means switching to UHC (or going elsewhere for insurance). I was talking to one of my coworkers about retiring, and one of our current benefits is at home dialysis. The prospect of losing that pushes his retirement date back to "never."
Not all insurance plans are equally rotten.
posted by Spike Glee at 11:31 AM on December 6, 2024 [9 favorites]

The purpose of the American health insurance system is not to deliver health care. It is to give capital more leverage over labor. And it works very well.
posted by vibrotronica at 11:32 AM on December 6, 2024 [39 favorites]

America has employee-based healthcare coverage arising from these decisions:

1. During WW2 wage controls basically meant offering health insurance was one of the only ways that companies could differentiate themselves to the available labor market;
2. Universal insurance was not part of the new deal because at the time there was a belief by Roosevelt and his team that there wasn't enough demand for it
3. ...and racism: when Truman tried to create a national plan in the fifties, it was opposed by doctors who wanted less interference and a bunch of white people because it also meant integrating medical care

Unlinking health insurance from employers and creating a national insurance plan would dramatically free up the labor market, which is precisely one of the reasons why it won't happen. The large companies would lose one of the ways they exert coercive force on their workforce. It's gilded gold handcuffs for most people with insurance
posted by i used to be someone else at 11:35 AM on December 6, 2024 [19 favorites]

aS aN hR pRoFeSsIoNaL let me assure you that neither I, nor my C suite boss, nor anyone else on my team wants health insurance to work like this. We all hate it and we all wish the employer based model would fall into the sun and every plan renewal season we all daydream together about the things we could be doing for our employees if we didn't have to waste so much god damned time and money, THE MONEY, the endless time and money, supporting our end of this broken system. There is zero alternative. What can we possibly do.

Our company doesn't have an attrition problem in any of the countries with more functional healthcare. It's not a retention feature. NO ONE REASONABLE WANTS THIS!!!! AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, carry on.
posted by phunniemee at 11:39 AM on December 6, 2024 [37 favorites]

Spike Glee, in-home dialysis is currently covered under Medicare, and ESRD is one of the few conditions that gets *instant* coverage/eligibility under Medicare for people under 65 (like me). He’d have to have gap insurance for the 20% Part B. Like an actual plan, not an Advantage one.

Medicare for ESRD saved my life and shielded me from bankruptcy. Memail me if I can help.
posted by mochapickle at 11:40 AM on December 6, 2024 [8 favorites]

> nikoniko: "Although this kind of economically, or politically/ideologically motivated violence may not currently be as common here in the USA, where there are generally other avenues available for the settling of disagreements and disputes, or just to silence people, it does happen somewhat regularly."

I was thinking this as well. In particular, we often overlook failed cases of attempted political violence. For example, remember when a bunch of right-wing nuts tried and failed to kidnap (and probably execute) Gretchen Whitmer? Or when a right-wing nut tried to murder Nancy Pelosi but only ended up almost murdering her husband with a hammer? Or Jan. 6 when... well, y'know. On top of this, you have right-wing shitbags like Libs of Tiktok whose whole purpose is trying to stir up violence against various liberal targets, though with not a lot of success at actually achieving blood-on-the-ground kind of violence. Going back a little further, it seems some people also don't think a lot about the arguably successful campaign of right-wing political violence against abortion doctors and clinics.

In conclusion, America is a land of contrasts where political violence may be uncommon, but certainly not unknown.
posted by mhum at 11:41 AM on December 6, 2024 [11 favorites]

GYOFB Pt. 2:
Well, the important news story is a billionaire was shot so we have to spend massive manpower to find the killer and make it a news story as opposed to, IDK, all the homeless people killed every year, or anyone else. I guess "murder of US citizens" only matters if the suspect is an Immigrant or the victim is Rich.

Otherwise, fuck you.

That's a news story in itself, but you know the news, like always, will never self-reflect. It's yet one more salacious story about all the high tech cool NCIS tools they're using to catch the person they think (with still no real evidence the person they think even IS the guy).

Let's not talk about the overwhelming support this shooting has received from all sides of the aisle. Deny deny deny, admit nothing. Plug your ears and pretend this isn't something the masses feel deeply.

Maybe not everyone, and the solution to all this politically is so hard, because the populace is so brainwashed into anti-socialist ideology, but can't admit to themselves the problem is PRIVATE health care. And I get that we won't have true single-payer universal health care, but goddamned, can we stop letting the market be the masters of who lives or dies and maybe start having a little AGENCY in all this? "Man the master of all nature, can build machines of dead stone, destroy whole forests to build chairs of ease, but a market? UNTOUCHABLE! MUST AT ALL TIMES MAKE LIFE MISERABLE BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE INTERFERING WITH NATURE (unlike the systems we do everyday that interfere with nature).

Further? Can we STOP calling Insurance Companies "Health Care"? Like, really? Their job is to reduce health care as much as possible, to pay as little, to make sure nobody gets anything more than the bare minimum. It's not health care. It is Health Denial, and there's a reason that word was on the shells. Or at least SEEMS that would be a reason.

The news coverage is yet one more indictment against the system, because it shows the disparity and discrepancy of exactly WHO the system gives a fuck about and it's not the thousands killed from non-provided health care every year, but rather the people who make money from denying that health care. THEY get the scrutiny, the justice and the coverage, but I can guarantee you, nobody like you or me would get the massive man hours involved in something like this, not a damn lick.

Because this isn't about a "murder" this is about the system defending itself. Whether or not this is a revolutionary act, a personal grudge (for medical reasons or economic/corporate grievances, or a betrayed lover) or something different. But the message sure SOUNDS like it's about the system, and instead of amplifying the message, and asking why (who what when where why) you'll rather just post fancy glam high-tech footage like we're watching Abby "ZOOM IN" "ENHANCE" - our very own team Bladerunners hunting down a Nexus 6 to protect the corporate power at hand. Afraid of what could come if "the people" (the androids) have a shot at being seen as REAL and not just some synthetic piece of shit out there in the mining colonies to make them profit and expendable (until they prove they aren't).
posted by symbioid at 11:46 AM on December 6, 2024 [11 favorites]

It doesn't seem impossible for employers to push back against this godawful system, but getting them to coordinate would be a huge challenge.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:48 AM on December 6, 2024 [3 favorites]

“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”

Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”

I'm not saying this to condone any violence, not this act nor any subsequent act. I've taken care not to join in the meme posting or gallows humor. But as January approaches I get the feeling that the clearcut has been done, and we are all standing in a howling gale. We're approaching a period in American history where there will be unrest. Some of it violent. Some of it involving live ammunition. Some of it involving bad guys with badges. Some of it in blue states.

I don't like this. At all. But if anyone reading this is unsurprised when and if he witnesses that shit that has me worried, then I've done some good.
posted by ocschwar at 11:50 AM on December 6, 2024 [10 favorites]

It doesn't seem impossible for employers to push back against this godawful system

Truthfully, what would this look like? An employer, or many employers, boycotting insurance carriers all together, damn the regulatory fines? In the meantime, it's the potentially uninsured employees who get hurt.
posted by phunniemee at 12:00 PM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

We're approaching a period in American history where there will be unrest. Some of it violent. Some of it involving live ammunition. Some of it involving bad guys with badges. Some of it in blue states.

I mean, yes. We are in a nation that is about to turn power over to grifters, conspiracy theorists and freaks, many of whose voters have deep grudges against the Other (read as: anyone not vocally identifying as themselves) and asking questions like "When do we GET TO use the guns?" Fox talking heads are already bleating out stuff like "the murderer would've been caught already if NYC wasn't a sanctuary city and police weren't already overtasked by managing the immigrant crimewave." The guy who'll be assuming power already weathered two assassination attempts (allegedly, at least) on the campaign trail.

People who are irrational enough to want to commit murder are rarely in the category of "sufficiently stable to be trusted to choose their targets wisely, avoid collateral damage, select only victims worthy of such treatment and, if cornered, accept the consequences of their actions." Popular, splashy acts often inspire copycats. And in an environment in which lots of people are heavily armed and feel like violence is potentially nearby, mistakes get made.

Welcome to the Cool Zone. Hope you enjoy the experience!
posted by delfin at 12:05 PM on December 6, 2024 [6 favorites]

Truthfully, what would this look like?

Captive/Group Captive insurance maybe?
posted by aramaic at 12:06 PM on December 6, 2024

Truthfully, what would this look like? An employer, or many employers, boycotting insurance carriers all together, damn the regulatory fines?

No, it would look like employers working to lobby elected officials to change the system, possibly in coordination with each other and with unions.

I’m not saying it’s likely, but it’s what it would look like.
posted by nickmark at 12:10 PM on December 6, 2024 [11 favorites]

Truthfully, what would this look like?

Possibly a lobbying group.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:11 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

It doesn't seem impossible for employers to push back against this godawful system

Truthfully, what would this look like?

It would look like the next time you're at a conference for HR managers, there's a plenary session where a vote is taken for a statement calling for health care reform.
posted by ocschwar at 12:17 PM on December 6, 2024 [6 favorites]

Can we STOP calling Insurance Companies "Health Care"? Like, really? Their job is to reduce health care as much as possible, to pay as little, to make sure nobody gets anything more than the bare minimum.

We should use the term "death panels" to refer to health insurance companies. It has the advantage of already existing in the popular lexicon. The term was originally coined by the health insurance lobby during the Clinton administration to spread fear about socialized medicine. But everyone knows its the health insurance companies who will decide to kill you and your family for money. Turn the their own propaganda against them.
posted by vibrotronica at 12:21 PM on December 6, 2024 [30 favorites]

I've honestly wondered how much of that money (if employers didn't pay for HC), the employees would actually even see. That's literally hundreds if not thousand's of dollars a month for some people. If there was a single-payer, I damn well would want that money in my paycheck instead of going to the Insurance company. But I just can't see that happening. Most public companies would feel compelled to give it back to the shareholders as more profit.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 12:22 PM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

"Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) advocates for universal, comprehensive single-payer national health insurance, and collaborates with others to fight racism and advance social justice."
posted by art.bikes at 12:23 PM on December 6, 2024 [11 favorites]

Well, the important news story is a billionaire was shot

The dude may have had the soul of a billionaire but he had nowhere near that much money.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:35 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

I read someone putting their reaction in terms of how they'd react to the death of a mob boss.

That fits. Sad for their family, frightening for all the other mob bosses healthcare executives, but hard for everybody else to drum up sympathy.
posted by clawsoon at 12:55 PM on December 6, 2024 [5 favorites]

It doesn't seem impossible for employers to push back against this godawful system

Truthfully, what would this look like?

It would look like they offer insurance that covers the needs of their employees regardless of what the US Supreme Court said about not needing to offer insurance based on company size or to offer birth control based on the CEO's religious beliefs. Also they would offer it without pushing increases onto the employees without first doing other measures to cover these (specifically they would first adjust the C-suite salaries, look at stock buybacks, cutting underused/unneeded/undesired benefits). My understanding from my professional group is employees want affordable quality insurance above and beyond just about every other "benefit" that could be offered.
posted by beaning at 12:56 PM on December 6, 2024 [5 favorites]

The reason people have trouble figuring out what "stochastic terrorism" means is that the term was invented by someone, and then picked up by more people, who don't understand that this is also *just* terrorism. This is exactly how, for example, Islamic terrorism in the 1980s worked: an Imam issues a fatwa that says someone has done some heresy, and an unrelated person who has been roped in to this by whatever means, be it political rhetoric, religious brainwashing, old fashioned duress, or whatever motivation does the deed.

Yeah, but I would definitely use "stochastic terrorism" to describe that kind of "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest" fatwa and distinguish it from something like the 9/11 attacks where Bin Laden recruited particular people and trained them to carry out a planned act of terrorism.

"Stochastic" is usually used in the context of something that is random but predictable in the aggregate. We don't know exactly which people will die of heart disease this year in the US, but we're pretty sure there will be about 700,000 of them.

"Stochastic terrorism" is a term used to emphasize the moral culpability of the Islamic Imam issuing a fatwa or Chaya Raichik posting Libs of TikTok lies about schools "grooming" kids or JD Vance telling lies about Haitian immigrants. They weren't recruiting specific people and telling them to stab Salman Rushdie or send bomb threats to schools, but they knew those things were likely results of their pronouncements.
posted by straight at 12:59 PM on December 6, 2024 [15 favorites]

Centene (previously) canceled its in-person meeting and is now having some virtual event. It would make sense that the company's execs are scared of reprisal, given their complicity in this ghost network–based denial of mental health coverage.
posted by limeonaire at 1:10 PM on December 6, 2024 [5 favorites]

It would look like they offer insurance that covers the needs of their employees

How can an employer purchase a policy that nobody is selling? I have never seen or heard of a US insurance company selling a policy that amounts to: We will fully cover whatever tests, procedures or treatments are recommended by the licensed medical practitioner of your choice, with these tests/procedures/treatments to be administered by the licensed medical practitioner of your choice. No copays. No deductibles. No maximums. No pre-approvals. No bullshit.

And if some company did set up and offer that how much would it cost given that the people flocking to it first would be the sickest people? The only way a plan like that can work is if everyone is on it to distribute the costs. And of course you can't divide the cost equally or divde the cost based on some actuarial assessment of how much a person is likely to end up costing the plan like it's car insurance, because then lots of people couldn't afford their premiums. The only way you could pull it off would be to base people's premiums on how much they could afford to pay and just bill people who can afford to pay more higher premiums than people who can afford to pay less.

Now how exactly is an employer supposed to go out and do that?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:25 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

> mhum: "I was thinking this as well. In particular, we often overlook failed cases of attempted political violence."

The instances I cited were just the ones I could think of off the top of my head and I realize someone probably has done a more exhaustive examination of the topic. And, of course: from the ADL, Right-Wing Extremist Terrorism in the United States:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Center on Extremism (COE) has documented 67 domestic terror incidents by right-wing extremists in the United States from 2017 to 2022. These include successful terrorist attacks, failed terrorist attacks and foiled terrorist plots.

That's an average rate of a little over one incident per month over that five-year period. Interestingly, they didn't include Charlottesville (which I also omitted) as one of the incidents. Not sure exactly why.
posted by mhum at 1:37 PM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

It would look like they offer insurance that covers the needs of their employees

Employers are as much bound as employees to what options (group) insurance companies offer, and the ACA compels them to offer some kind of insurance plan if they are of a certain size or larger. This limits what they can do to change the market — if you run a business, you have to buy whatever they sell. I imagine businesses would love to get out of this entirely, but benefits attract and retain employees, and the status quo works.

Our better bet was using the ACA to transition to single payer, but we're in kind of a very bad place right now due to Trump voters and non-voters who enabled Trump's reinstallation, and that's probably going to take us back to pre-ACA days, assassinations notwithstanding.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:49 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

The guy has probably left NYC, say cops.
posted by emjaybee at 2:21 PM on December 6, 2024 [2 favorites]

"And if some company did set up and offer that how much would it cost given that the people flocking to it first would be the sickest people? The only way a plan like that can work is if everyone is on it to distribute the costs. "

Maybe I misunderstood the point, but my read of it was they were talking what a proper universal single-payer system would look like (e.g. "everyone in on it"). Get AWAY from the corporate bullshit 100% altogether. But maybe I misunderstood the original commenter.

Anecdote: I know someone who lives in the same town as the CEO, and the properties they own (the wife and the husband) both had bomb threats. Said friend heard the sirens a couple nights ago, (I think it was the day after the shooting?) and didn't put the two together til he read the news. He said it's surreal. Also a few of his gaming buddies apparently work at UHC and said they're being encouraged to not go into the office and also make their LinkedIn private to avoid possible other problems. I think they have had bomb threats at the offices there too. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a LOT of threats to them around the country.

Which blows, because frontline workers, while they work for evil shitty companies, and may, in fact, be the ones to ultimately hand down the evil decisions are NOT the evil ones making these choices. They are not your enemy. There is no need to terrorize them like this. Most people are stuck in jobs that in some way or another have moral complications, and while I say health insurance/death panels are evil... there's still the rulers of them that are ultimately the ones responsible (as is the market in general).

Anyways, just a little story from a birdie I heard.
posted by symbioid at 2:22 PM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

If health insurance companies cause human suffering - and some ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE DEATHS - by denying coverage of the medically appropriate, doctor-prescribed medication and/or surgery, no one is going to mourn when a health insurance CEO is killed except the friends/family of that CEO.

I lost any sympathy I might have had for the guy when a health insurance company caused the death of someone who I followed online by refusing her the medically appropriate ANTIBIOTICS, even though she was in hospital when the Dr prescribed the antibiotics. They made her "fail" the cheaper antibiotics first, and she died from sepsis in hospital - a death that was entirely preventable if they had given her the antibiotics her Dr ordered when she was first admitted to hospital, instead of battling her Dr about costs for 10 to 14 days.

If I was a jury member, and the case before me was "John Smith's wife died from cancer after his health insurance company refused to pay for the medically appropriate chemotherapy, so John Smith shot the health insurance company CEO", I'd be voting Not Guilty.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:29 PM on December 6, 2024 [27 favorites]

> The guy has probably left NYC, say cops.

yeah the sniveling coward probably tucked his tail and ran, embarrassed by all the mistakes he was making
posted by glonous keming at 2:31 PM on December 6, 2024 [6 favorites]

chariot pulled by cassowaries: Jury nullification
posted by zenon at 2:33 PM on December 6, 2024 [5 favorites]

> How can an employer purchase a policy that nobody is selling?

A big enough group of employers can self-insure, which is more-or-less how
Kaiser Permanete got started.
posted by soylent00FF00 at 3:58 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

A big enough group of employers can self-insure, which is more-or-less how
Kaiser Permanete got started.

Aren't they an HMO, which is kind of exactly the opposite of "choose any licensed medical practitioner you want"?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 4:09 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

Self insuring doesn't solve the problem of making insurance the employer's problem. It's actually literally the opposite of that. And under this system now your employer has direct access to your medical information. Neat.
posted by phunniemee at 4:19 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

I've had Kaiser Permanente through an employer and I would not recommend it to those who travel outside of geographic areas where KP exists, or if one has a doctor not covered in-network where they do live. In various ways, KP amplifies a number of problems with the for-profit model when you run into coverage limits or gaps.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:26 PM on December 6, 2024 [2 favorites]

How can an employer purchase a policy that nobody is selling?

A big enough group of employers can self-insure, which is more-or-less how
Kaiser Permanete got started.

Yeah, or a big union. I'm a member of an IATSE local and so I can get either HMO (Kaiser) or PPO (Anthem) through MPIPHP (Motion Picture Pension and Health Plan). These plans are about as good as you can find in the US these days and they are indeed quite good... so it's possible to do this even given the generally horrifying state of healthcare and insurance in the US.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 4:36 PM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

Very surprised to see this quote printed in the NYTimes:

“There’s a latent undercurrent here of how frustrated people are with the health care industry,” Mr. Gulati said. “I’m not condoning the action in any way, but there’s a lot of soul-searching we have to do about an industry that consumes nearly 20 percent of our G.D.P. and yet our outcomes are not nearly as good as countries that spend half as much.”
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:55 PM on December 6, 2024 [22 favorites]

A big enough group of employers can self-insure, which is more-or-less how
Kaiser Permanete got started.

Aren't they an HMO, which is kind of exactly the opposite of "choose any licensed medical practitioner you want"?

They’re an HMO which runs all of their services, which is a huge improvement. I’ve never waited for an appointment for more than 5 minutes, every time we’ve had to call the pediatrician I got a prompt appointment (like in the time it took me to pick the boy up from daycare and get him to the office, I’d be talking with a doctor shortly after walking in - I don’t miss the daycare era when that was like every other week), and there’s no flack about specialists because they’re employees of the same company rather than competing to see who can add the most markup. We’ve needed a couple of outside referrals, which were approved without hassle, and the one time we needed to get care while traveling it took 15 minutes on the phone for them to confirm that they had no facility in the area.

I know not everyone has had the same experience but our impression in the mid-Atlantic region has been such that I mostly think everyone should have access to a plan like that.
posted by adamsc at 5:00 PM on December 6, 2024 [7 favorites]

which were approved without hassle, and the one time we needed to get care while traveling it took 15 minutes on the phone for them to confirm that they had no facility in the area.

OK, but you realize you sound a little gaslit here when you're happy about your outside referrals "approved without hassle" and "only had to be on the phone for 15 minutes". It's like saying "my boss only beats me on Tuesdays and never that hard."

Like why does someone need to approve your referrals? Your family doctor (or some other specialist) wants you to see this other doctor. Presumably they have a reason. They're a doctor. Who is anyone else to approve or disapprove? And why do you need to spend 15 minutes on the phone if you're travelling and sick instead of just going to the nearest walk-in clinic/urgent-care/ER or whatever suits your travelling healthcare needs? Just look it up on Google Maps and go!

When I lived in the U.S. the health insurance commercials with all their talk of the super-friendly super-helpful customer service call centres their fabulous websites when you can look up your network and see your benefits and whatever and it used to drive me crazy. And I, in turn, would drive my roommate crazy, saying: If I am talking to you on the phone, reading mail from you, visiting your website or interacting with you in any way at all, you have already done something wrong. Just shut up and pay and don't even let me know you exist. If I am made aware of your existence, you are doing it wrong.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:35 PM on December 6, 2024 [24 favorites]

pardon the interruption but they found the backpack in the park
posted by glonous keming at 5:43 PM on December 6, 2024 [2 favorites]

And it only took 100 cops and 3 days!
posted by coffeecat at 5:45 PM on December 6, 2024 [7 favorites]

The cops may not love health insurance either.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:49 PM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

The backpack sat there unmolested for three days? NYC is a lot safer than the rumors say!
posted by mittens at 5:52 PM on December 6, 2024 [19 favorites]

I was in the Olympic Village the night of the bombing in '96 and if there's one lasting impression that made on 10 year old me it's that if you see an unattended bag you get tf away from it. Not my business, not my problem. See something say something? Sure okay next time be nicer to Richard Jewel. I've never been a New Yorker but I've lived in Chicago for 20 years. If you see something, gtfo. Good lesson.
posted by phunniemee at 5:57 PM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

See something say something

"I'm getting the fuck out of here!"
posted by mazola at 6:01 PM on December 6, 2024 [8 favorites]

The backpack sat there unmolested for three days?

Well, yeah, we've got shit to do, y'all.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:12 PM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

How can an employer purchase a policy that nobody is selling?

Insurers used to not offer many things until demand arose. I'm sure that if all the CEOs, chief legal officers, chief HR people and everyone else in the C-suites puts their heads together, they'll find a way to negotiate it. There's a reason they're being paid the big bucks. MeFi doesn't need to solve it down to the last detail.

And no one said everything had to be free. While it would be nice, most are willing to pay for standard healthcare and would be happy just to know what to expect to pay and have the pre-auth actually be the final answer.
posted by beaning at 6:13 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

> mittens: "The backpack sat there unmolested for three days?"

Exactly my thought. Especially given the intense interest in this case and specifically that backpack -- as evidenced by this Google Trends chart. If this were a 90s action movie (or maybe a 70s paranoid thriller), I'd imagine a subsequent scene like:

FORENSICS TECH: No prints, no hair, no fibers. Empty inside except for this. [Holds up lead detective's business card]
LEAD DETECTIVE'S BOSS: How'd he get your card?
LEAD DETECTIVE: Wrong question. *Why* did he get *my* card? You didn't make me lead on this case until, what? Nine am? And the press conference was at noon, right? [beat] Son of a bitch. [beat] Think about it. No way this backpack lasted like this for 3 friggin' days. In this city? C'mon. [beat] He came back. He wanted us to find it. He's taunting us.

posted by mhum at 6:14 PM on December 6, 2024 [10 favorites]

Honestly, wouldn't surprise me if the gunman dumped the bag, someone else picked it up, looted it, and dumped it again. That would explain the window.
posted by Jilder at 6:19 PM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

We should use the term "death panels" to refer to health insurance companies

In Dystopian America, Death Panelists are killed by you!
posted by euphorb at 6:28 PM on December 6, 2024 [5 favorites]

The nypd is full of lazy assholes who do not care about doing their job but do want to milk this for a ton of overtime. That’s the most likely explanation for them not finding it for days
posted by knobknosher at 6:30 PM on December 6, 2024 [8 favorites]

See something say nothing and drink to forget.
posted by cirhosis at 7:11 PM on December 6, 2024 [8 favorites]

But...does it? I mean, if you switch jobs, your new job will offer you a terrible insurance policy that's essentially the same as your current terrible insurance policy, often from the same company, right?

They all cut different deals with drug companies, is the thing. Plan A's preferred med isn't Plan B's preferred med, so you're forced to switch to a different medication for a well-controlled condition because they have a minor discount on that med. You have to show that one doesn't work for you before they'll approve the other one. Doesn't matter if your doctor thinks it's a bad idea to try it because you failed multiple other drugs for this medication before finding one that worked. They'll force you on a three month trial anyway. Oops, you destabilized! I guess you really did need that medication. Complete more prior authorization paperwork and we'll approve it for a trial period of six months.

Happened to me on UHC. I appealed the initial denial, and three months into the forced switch to the other medication they finally got an independent reviewer to look at my case. I got a copy of what was sent to my insurance company, and I could feel the doctor's palpable rage as they detailed how there was no clinical or research data to support their decision to switch me off the med I was on. (Of course, at that point, I had failed the preferred med so badly that it didn't matter, as I now met the "has tried x drug" criteria.) It didn't include their name--at the time, I thought, "Yeah, makes sense that they wouldn't do that as a policy. If the appeal didn't go in your favor, they wouldn't want you to have a name attached to that that you could target. But in this case I really wish I could send them a thank you letter."

I was going to say I've never felt the same about any insurance company, but that's not true. I just switched from UHC back to my ACA marketplace plan which is local and associated with a nearby hospital. I have to do the prior auth process for several of my meds. But to my absolute shock, they have a policy of approving a one month supply, no questions asked, to give my doctors time to work on the prior auth. The fact that this feels like royalty treatment is a perfect example of the problem, I think.

Maybe there's no difference if you aren't on any maintenance meds... but if you are, you get REAL familiar with hunting down drug formularies before you accept a job offer.
posted by brook horse at 7:18 PM on December 6, 2024 [16 favorites]

See something say nothing and drink to forget.
posted by cirhosis

Eponystruthical.
posted by riverlife at 7:18 PM on December 6, 2024 [7 favorites]

It certainly feels like rent-seeking all the way down.

I started on some psych meds. Had some side effects I was not pleased with.
Got an appointment, got put on something else.Stayed on that for a month, Got put on a bigger dose of that drug, as "those side effects can happen on a low dose". Did not improve.

Got proscribed a third drug, which had many of the same side effects, and anecdotally some that were weay worse. Didn't fill that one. Had some of the first drug left over, and started taking that again. Felt like it was helping. But I have no refills.

So to get that refill, of a drug I had already been proscribed, I had to get another appointment... Such bullshit.
posted by Windopaene at 7:37 PM on December 6, 2024 [2 favorites]

Frankly offensive": UnitedHealth CEO responds to "aggressive" media interest in Johnson murder: The head of UnitedHealthcare's parent company pooh-poohed the "inappropriate" reaction to Johnson's murder

"What we know to be true is the health system needs a company like UnitedHealth Group."

Elsewhere in the leaked message, Witty said that there were "very few people" who had a "bigger positive effect" on the U.S. healthcare system than Thompson and reiterated the necessity of insurance giants like UHG.

"We guard against the pressures that exist...for unnecessary care," he said.

posted by clawsoon at 8:14 PM on December 6, 2024 [5 favorites]

boo louder they can hear us
posted by mhum at 8:25 PM on December 6, 2024 [20 favorites]

I'm frankly surprised no-one enterprisingly cynical has bought a domain similar to the one on when Kissinger's death day was and set it up for all the truly awful billionaires and CEOs. It would be very amusing to see headlines like "Following Dave Calhoun's funeral, Bezos announces he will fund solar power grid across Africa, falls to 5th on TheWatchlist.com"
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:28 PM on December 6, 2024 [7 favorites]

"We guard against the pressures that exist...for unnecessary care," he said.

Boy I'm glad someone is keeping a child with cancer from getting anti-nausea meds when they're going through chemo! Well done, guys, keep fighting against unnecessary care like that.
posted by creepygirl at 8:49 PM on December 6, 2024 [26 favorites]

"Unnecessary care" might have some twisted sort of moral logic to it if they were actually saving the system money, but instead that money is going into billions of dollars in profits and stock buybacks. There's no moral logic there at all.

It's like a thief taking the moral high ground because by stealing money from you they prevented you from making unnecessary purchases. Don't you feel good about the fact that the thief kept you in a state of puritanical anti-consumerist moral purity?
posted by clawsoon at 8:57 PM on December 6, 2024 [11 favorites]

"unnecessary care"
--UHC CEO Andrew Witty

Behind that bullshit phrase is a mound of dead bodies (as well as huge numbers of living people who are suffering unnecessarily).

Andrew Witty and his ilk make me sick. In the strictest sense of deliberately causing the deaths of his fellow human beings, Brian Thompson was a mass murderer.

I'm all for making these fucking Death Panelists afraid again.
posted by cnidaria at 9:02 PM on December 6, 2024 [14 favorites]

I seem to recall that another very American thing, litigiousness, drives up healthcare costs because practitioners have incentives to treat agressively or harmfully lest they be accused of failing to have done all they could - so either that unneeded and perhaps harmful treatment is a cost, or the malpractice insurance premiums the practitioners need so they can give disinterested advice. But I don't think that's what dude meant. He was thinking of shareholders.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:03 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

So, it's crazy that the killer can show up on a bus, knowing where this specific CEO is staying and pretty closely what time they're going to leave their hotel, right?
posted by kaibutsu at 10:46 PM on December 6, 2024

Did they know that though? They waited for Thompson outside the hotel where he was due to speak at a publicly advertised event. It was not the same hotel he was staying at. What reason is there to believe the shooter knew where he was staying?
posted by Dysk at 11:19 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

So you see, that's where the trouble began...
posted by Wordshore at 11:30 PM on December 6, 2024 [3 favorites]

BBC (Killing of insurance CEO reveals simmering anger at US health system):

...Those reactions ranged from acerbic jokes (one common quip was "thoughts and prior authorisations", a play on the phrase "thoughts and prayers") to commentary on the number of insurance claims rejected by UnitedHealthcare and other firms.

At the extreme end, critics of the industry pointedly said they had no pity for Thompson. Some even celebrated his death.

The online anger seemed to bridge the political divide.

Animosity was expressed from avowed socialists to right-wing activists suspicious of the so-called "deep state" and corporate power. It also came from ordinary people sharing stories about insurance firms denying their claims for medical treatments...
posted by Wordshore at 11:42 PM on December 6, 2024 [4 favorites]

it's like the heart-opening shared experience of a rare aurora borealis appearance, except with several more subsonic rounds
posted by away for regrooving at 12:10 AM on December 7, 2024 [12 favorites]

I haven't seen much discussion of the following:

The shooter arrived only shortly before Thompson arrived. He didn't wait that long. How did he know Thompson was on his way? Yes I know it was a public event, but some speakers arrive at the event start, others earlier to meet with others beforehand etc. Also Thompson was alone. No bodyguards sure but also no exec admin, no colleague, etc. It looked perfect.

Images I've seen online show the shooter using his burner phone right beforehand. Who or where was he calling? Why risk bringing a phone unless it was really important?

Those two oddities together make me wonder if there were others involved, helping the coordination of the attack in some way...
posted by vacapinta at 1:51 AM on December 7, 2024 [9 favorites]

"Unnecessary care" takes many forms: Risky care, including high false positive rate tests. Treatements with limited benefits, where the resources could be better spent elsewhere, including arguments by Peter Singer around heroic treatments for infants (spina bifida, etc).

Afaik "unnecessary care" always amounts to public health trumping individual benefits. At societal level, medical debate should resolve these questions. An insurance regulator could absolutely exclude many spina bifida cases from the mandatory coverage. Actual care providers should apply triage based upon their resource constraints too, guided by public health debates not covering the particular. case.

These unregulated insurance companies have totally destroyed the "unnecessary care" conversation though: Insurors inject a full-ish debate into individual cases, which means the debate occurs among less qualified people. Worse, they inject negotiation with the healthcare provider, so classical Bullshit Jobs ala David Graeber. 20 years ago, negotiation accounted for 30% of healthcare providers costs. And almost all the insurors costs. Insurors benefit from both patients and providers facing high risks. Insurors worsen real triage discussions too, if only by adding an extra variable, including that they could claim they'd pay for something if a triage decission lands in court.

It's absolutely delay, deny, defend, and depose like the killer says, not some reasoned opposition to "unnecessary care".
posted by jeffburdges at 1:56 AM on December 7, 2024 [8 favorites]

Internet sleuths say they won't help find the UnitedHealthcare CEO killer
posted by jeffburdges at 3:14 AM on December 7, 2024 [11 favorites]

The backpack sat there unmolested for three days?

people find Bobby Fingers' hidden treasure faster than that, jeez
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:07 AM on December 7, 2024 [7 favorites]

UNH killer-sauron meme or robin hood-assassin?
posted by kliuless at 4:32 AM on December 7, 2024

OK, but you realize you sound a little gaslit here when you're happy about your outside referrals "approved without hassle" and "only had to be on the phone for 15 minutes". It's like saying "my boss only beats me on Tuesdays and never that hard."

Oh, sure, this thread is in an American context so that’s the assumed baseline (although it’s also not the case that those uniformly aren’t concerns in other systems). My point was just that HMOs have a negative reputation in the United States because some insurance companies used them to minimize costs by denying care even more than they already were or making it inconvenient, and everyone else in the industry heavily marketed the value of choice, but the integrated model is different from the stereotype in American discourse because it removes the profit motive for denying care. That’s the real problem, and it’s why the industry spends so much money trying to keep the discussion focused on anything else.
posted by adamsc at 4:34 AM on December 7, 2024 [7 favorites]

Funny anecdote: I used to work for a company in an office upstairs in Quincy Market in Boston.

(Most awesome office space, ever, BTW. There's nothing like running a network cable past a huge rafter and noticing the rafter has a tradesman's signature branded into it, and the tradesman's likely DOB was before the Revolution.)

Next to us was a low key doctor's office. Doc was semi-retired, not seeing patients all that often. He had a secretary (remember when professionals had lots of them?) who showed up even less.

Anyway, that meant every once in a while a Swiss or French tourist would come knock on our door asking when he'd open so that he could get a common complaint looked at, and we'd have to explain that no doctor would be taking walk-ins like this, and the visitor would need to go over to the nearest CVS to be looked at by a nurse. (Google showed that was the most sensible thing for tourists to do in Boston).

I have yet to actually have to see a doctor in an EU country, and I hope to keep it that way (though realistically if I go on a long vacation in Europe in the coming years I'm almost certain to check that box..) but from glancing at clinics in France and Belgium I note the front office is very lightly staffed. Meanwhile on Reddit some of the most outrageous discussion in /r/nursing comes from someone calling herself an "insurance denial coordinator" for a hospital. No idea if that's her official title, but it's an accurate description of what she does 40+ hours a week.

Talk about doing the Lord's work while occupying a bullshit job that should not exist!

We have a. deep bench of office workers in every clinic managing all the formalities for accessing health care and arguing with insurers. While in the EU medical facilities have front offices that are as lightly staffed as the rest of corporate America nowadays: an office administrator and little else.
posted by ocschwar at 4:53 AM on December 7, 2024 [7 favorites]

It seems obvious that the very best tribute to this precious man's death would be to end the practice of prior authorization, which clearly more costly in administrative time and money than it saves.

It'll never happen, of course, because the *idea* of giving up ruthless efficiency is such heresy, regardless of how many patient and CEO lives it costs. Viva la market!
posted by Dashy at 5:07 AM on December 7, 2024 [3 favorites]

What ocshwar is describing is not just dedicated office staff, either. My partner is a nurse and yesterday she spent an hour and a half on the phone trying to figure out which pharmacy she needed to send someone's PEP rx (post exposure HIV prophylactic) to so his insurance would cover it.

The incredible efficiency of our healthcare system.
posted by ambulanceambiance at 5:10 AM on December 7, 2024 [12 favorites]

That's part of the issue. I have no doubt Ms. Denial Coordinator is often forced to page an MD and get him or her on the phone for things she's not "qualified" to discuss. Even with office workers hired to deal with this shit full time, you still get MDs and RNs wasting their own work hours on it because they're forced to.
posted by ocschwar at 5:21 AM on December 7, 2024

Yesterday I saw someone’s snide online comment, “Who is the CEO of TicketMaster?”
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 6:00 AM on December 7, 2024 [2 favorites]

I have yet to actually have to see a doctor in an EU country, and I hope to keep it that way (though realistically if I go on a long vacation in Europe in the coming years I'm almost certain to check that box..) but from glancing at clinics in France and Belgium I note the front office is very lightly staffed.

As mentioned upthread, I have been residing in Europe for a while and "lightly staffed" is an understatement. My wife had to get a routine colonoscopy last winter and the practice had 2-3 doctors and a handful of nurses running around and that was literally it. What little paperwork was involved was arranged directly with the doctor. There wasn't even a front desk, which threw us off a bit when we first showed up.

My dentist's practice is the same, just the dentist and the hygienist, literally nobody else works there. I handle payment with the dentist directly when I am done. Ditto with blood draws, primary care checkups, etc.

It was kind of a shock initially coming from the US but in a good way - I feel more like a patient and less like a cog in a machine.

Meanwhile on Reddit some of the most outrageous discussion in /r/nursing comes from someone calling herself an "insurance denial coordinator" for a hospital. No idea if that's her official title, but it's an accurate description of what she does 40+ hours a week.

I read the same thread and even she seemed to recognize that her job was BS and should not exist.
posted by photo guy at 6:12 AM on December 7, 2024 [10 favorites]

881 open positions for an "insurance denial coordinator" in Simply Hired.
posted by ocschwar at 6:50 AM on December 7, 2024 [5 favorites]

If one sees a handful of powerful and rich people at the pinnacle of opulence and fortune, while the crowd below grovels in obscurity and wretchedness, it is because the former valued the things they enjoy only because others are deprived of them and even without changing their condition, they would cease to rejoice if the people ceased to suffer. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, trans. by Franklin Philip, Oxford, 1994:81)

posted by infini at 7:01 AM on December 7, 2024 [15 favorites]

Ok, I'm sorry to get so far off topic, but now I'm curious...How are U.S. doctor's offices typically staffed? Like I knew that hospitals have a bunch of hospital staff to deal with all the insurance bureaucracy but what about regular doctors. Like I have heard in the U.S. I used the student centre which was kind of a big clinic rather than a regular doctor's office so I've never been to a regular doctor's office in the U.S. Like if it's just your regular family doctor or GP or pediatrician you go to if your cold is going on a little too long or if you want to do something about your migraines or you're feeling a little tired lately or whatever, not like an emergency or a likely crisis, not like a hospital clinic. Who/how many people would work in an office like that?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:54 AM on December 7, 2024

Ok, I'm sorry to get so far off topic, but now I'm curious...How are U.S. doctor's offices typically staffed?

Heavily. Secretaries, in the 20th century sense, don't exist any more. Doctors and nurses manage their hours themselves on their smart phones, but the front clerk does access their calendars to fill open spots for appointments.

Then there are the claims clerks. They have to know the US's standardized coding systems for diagnoses and services, and they fill out the claims for the insurance companies.

Then there's IT. Healthcare IT is "special" needs the US, because it's a felony if you cause medical records to be available to anyone who isn't authorized to have access. What makes this extra special is that any time you go to hospital, it is almost certain that someone with a legitimate need but not the formal authorization, will access your records, causing someone to incur criminal liability. There are two kinds of IT staffers in US healthcare: ubercompetent people who can keep the situation under control, and clueless well intentioned people who can't really do IT at all.

Last but not least are the office managers, who make the phone calls when all this goes to shit.
They're paid manager level salaries, and they well and truly earn them.

It makes me envious of the EU's "democratic deficit," because so much of the EU's policy comes from unelected civil servants and policy wonks, and not narcissistic office seekers.

So TLDR: Watch Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
posted by ocschwar at 8:06 AM on December 7, 2024 [1 favorite]

(also so many of those positions are being outsourced--soon you won't see so many people milling around your doctor's office trying to get insurance to pay for your care, because those people will be replaced by essentially call center employees following an algorithmic checklist. the savings will not be passed on to you.)
posted by mittens at 8:16 AM on December 7, 2024 [5 favorites]

Ok, I'm sorry to get so far off topic, but now I'm curious...How are U.S. doctor's offices typically staffed?

There's usually some sort of "wall" of employed staff designed to do intake in terms of taking your insurance info, verifying that you're covered, that your insurance hasn't changed, that you don't owe any past money, that you live at the same address, and then telling you go wait in the lobby with everyone else until your name is called.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:17 AM on December 7, 2024 [4 favorites]

UHC CEO Andrew Witty in what appears a Zoom call to employees:

Promises that they will continue to "guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or for unnecessary care."
Encourages them to "tune out that critical noise that we’re hearing right now. It does not reflect reality. It is simply a sign of an era in which we live.”
(Video source: Ken Klippenstien on Twitter)
posted by coffeecat at 8:25 AM on December 7, 2024 [7 favorites]

What the fuck is their reality, that they are doing a good job? 👍
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:26 AM on December 7, 2024 [18 favorites]

Marie Antoinette had more clue.
posted by ocschwar at 8:28 AM on December 7, 2024 [16 favorites]

Now that the murderer has likely crossed State lines, this is now an FBI case. Yet another popcorn moment - watching the billionaire-funded media backtrack on the whole “defund the weaponized FBI” issue for this case…
posted by Chuffy at 8:55 AM on December 7, 2024 [8 favorites]

Relatedly, one of the more funny faceplants I've seen was Donald Trump Jr. tweeting out the photos of the shooter and write "Internet do your thing and find this guy" and his followers respond either with anger or confusion why he'd be against the shooter.
posted by coffeecat at 9:09 AM on December 7, 2024 [29 favorites]

What the fuck is their reality, that they are doing a good job?

Their job is to increase the price of the stock, and they've done a good job at that.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 9:17 AM on December 7, 2024 [13 favorites]

There's usually some sort of "wall" of employed staff designed to do intake

At just like a regular GP's office? So like how many staff for how many doctors? Like my doctor's office currently has 8 doctors (not always in at once. I think some work from home some days and if they're going to work the after-hours clinic that day they don't come in during the day?) and 4 office staff. They also have a nurse who does vaccinations and witnesses pap-smears. She only works a couple of days a week, I think. That's grown from when I started there 1987ish when it was 4 docs, 1-2 office staff (a mother-daughter, mother semi-retired and daughter often either one mat-leave or working part-time to be with her kids), and no nurse.

Something that is more of a clinic -- doing or coordinating a lot of procedures or surgeries especially involving multiple doctors or more invasive tests especially doing them in-house as opposed to just writing up a requisition or referral -- would have a lot more staff. But I'm talking about just like your regular first point of contact doctor.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:42 AM on December 7, 2024

20 years ago the stafe who handles insurance required 30% of the total cost. It's likely this includes the time the doctor spends managing them, as well as the ocasional legal representation for the doctor, but otherwise actual doctor work, nurses sallaries, equipment, supplies, and rent all come from the remaining 70%. It's likely this number worsened since then, especially the legal part.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:15 AM on December 7, 2024 [1 favorite]

"Unnecessary care" takes many forms: Risky care, including high false positive rate tests. Treatements with limited benefits, where the resources could be better spent elsewhere, including arguments by Peter Singer around heroic treatments for infants (spina bifida, etc).

and occasional extreme cases like this one
posted by BungaDunga at 10:49 AM on December 7, 2024 [4 favorites]

and occasional extreme cases like this one


You know, detecting extreme cases like this one is where AI actually can shine.
posted by ocschwar at 11:00 AM on December 7, 2024 [1 favorite]

probably not, using dodgy statistics to convict medical workers of murder is a whole thing
posted by BungaDunga at 11:15 AM on December 7, 2024 [5 favorites]

Promises that they will continue to "guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or for unnecessary care."

It's important to be clear on what is meant by 'unnecessary care', because it's not 'medically problematic' care. It's usually care that's recommended by the doctor and would markedly improve health conditions, but isn't covered by the health insurance unless you'll literally die if you don't get it.

I've had a number of conditions where the doc is like "well sure wish I could prescribe you X, but I can't, because healthcare won't pay for it unless THESE SPECIFIC THINGS OCCUR." And like, the doc and I both know it's important but also know that he can't authorize it unless I say the magical words.
posted by corb at 11:41 AM on December 7, 2024 [20 favorites]

unless you'll literally die if you don't get it.

I think it means more than that. I think it means die with a high level of certainty in the next few hours. Like people get denied treatment and surgeries that would ultimately make the difference between life and death for them all the time. If something increases your risk of blood clot, let's say, and that could kill you a couple of weeks from now, well that's not right now and that's not certain, so that's not necessary care.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:46 AM on December 7, 2024 [6 favorites]

Yesterday I saw someone’s snide online comment, “Who is the CEO of TicketMaster?”
posted by ThatCanadianGirl

That one crosses the line, IMO.

One thing to make snarky jokes about an event like this after it has happened, and which we did not know was coming. Quite another to in any way encourage it to happen again, even as a joke.

Let's not go there.
posted by Pouteria at 11:52 AM on December 7, 2024 [4 favorites]

Also, concert tickets are hardly a life or death matter.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:53 AM on December 7, 2024 [8 favorites]

Guys there is AO3 real-person fic about the shooter. Our heroic fanfic writers are like the wind.
They are difficult to track because no consistent tagging has started, but posted for your amusement. Also, I don’t know if you guys are familiar with AO3 but assume all of these are NSFW.

Returning the Favor
Three Bullets: “You took care of us all today,” you say. “Let me take care of you.”
The Adjuster, hero of the people (and an excellent lover) (with the tag: no beta we die like Brian Thompson)
Hero’s Reward
Life is Strange, Isn’t it?
The Adjustor
Deny, Defend, Depose
posted by corb at 1:07 PM on December 7, 2024 [13 favorites]

concert tickets are hardly a life or death matter

Tell us you're not a Swiftie without telling us you're not a Swiftie
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:14 PM on December 7, 2024 [4 favorites]

New York mayor quoted as claiming suspect is identified.
But does not name him to 'deny him any advantage'. Which doesn't make much sense since if the suspect is indeed the shooter then he will know the hunt is closing in on him.
posted by roolya_boolya at 1:32 PM on December 7, 2024 [9 favorites]

That mayor is the fucking worst. Says exactly the wrong thing every time.
posted by ishmael at 1:48 PM on December 7, 2024 [8 favorites]

heroic fanfic writers

Deny, Defend, Denude
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:58 PM on December 7, 2024 [6 favorites]

I figured the reason the shotter had to keep racking the pistol was because the silencer affected the pistol's cycling, but I've also seen this:

As investigators try to identify the gunman who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Wednesday, the type of weapon that was used could have been unusual for the crime.

Police are looking into the possibility that the shooter used a veterinary pistol, New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters on Friday.

posted by achrise at 4:24 PM on December 7, 2024

america's favorite assassin is a doctor for puppies and kittens?
posted by mittens at 4:41 PM on December 7, 2024 [14 favorites]

A United Healthcare CEO shooter lookalike competition takes place at Washington Square Park
posted by jeffburdges at 4:50 PM on December 7, 2024 [12 favorites]

I hate to say this but since the current NYC mayor is the worst - could he have accidentally confused a shooter lookalike with the real person? (^_^)
posted by ichimunki at 5:23 PM on December 7, 2024 [3 favorites]

Many sources reporting that the shooters backpack contained, not a gun, but Monopoly money.
posted by coffeecat at 6:34 PM on December 7, 2024 [12 favorites]

Police are looking into the possibility that the shooter used a veterinary pistol

Gun Jesus says not a welrod / vp9 . McCollum shooting a welrod
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:41 PM on December 7, 2024 [3 favorites]

I hate to say this but since the current NYC mayor is the worst - could he have accidentally confused a shooter lookalike with the real person? (^_^)

He's got Justin Trudeau locked in a trunk somewhere
posted by B_Ghost_User at 7:48 PM on December 7, 2024 [4 favorites]

Mod note: duplicated link (lookalike contest Reddit post) removed
posted by taz (staff) at 9:26 PM on December 7, 2024 [1 favorite]

A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You’re Laughing? What the death of a health-insurance C.E.O. means to America. Jia Tolentino in the New Yorker
posted by roolya_boolya at 12:50 AM on December 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

NBC reports the NYPD has released two pictures of a guy who may be the guy. (Note the different jacket, different mask, no backpack)
posted by mittens at 5:38 AM on December 8, 2024

I guess I’m just too cynical these days. While I understand everyone’s reactions, it feels like at the end this will turn into a meme while not being a catalyst for change we hope it could be.
posted by girlmightlive at 6:02 AM on December 8, 2024 [3 favorites]

it feels like at the end this will turn into a meme while not being a catalyst for change we hope it could be.

Too late! It has already effected meaningful change!
posted by phunniemee at 6:14 AM on December 8, 2024 [6 favorites]

reports vary
posted by BungaDunga at 6:18 AM on December 8, 2024 [3 favorites]

Who’s to say they won’t quietly reinstate this policy once the attention dies down? Companies have been doing the same thing with all the diversity initiatives they implemented after George Floyd was killed. I’m not real hopeful on any lasting changes unless they are legally required.
posted by girlmightlive at 6:21 AM on December 8, 2024 [5 favorites]

I’m not real hopeful on any lasting changes unless they are legally required more healthcare execs get shot.
posted by corb at 6:36 AM on December 8, 2024 [14 favorites]

So what are the next steps here to make sure that this anger and attention can be translated into durable positive outcomes? Just throwing out ideas here but there are many more qualified than me to weigh in:

- Turn the site of the deed into a shrine for people killed by our insurance industrial complex with pictures and candles to bring attention to the real victims.

- Hold annual marches and cycling races (The 8 minute escape) from the site to Central Park culminating in a rallies for health justice.

- Jury nullification in this case would send a really powerful message. How can the odds of that be maximized? Maybe blanketing leaflets around town reminding everyone that they could be potential jurors and to point out the power they have and what's at stake?

- Look alike contests are another way to maintain attention but could risk trivializing the topic. Dramatizing the event through art, music, film etc is another way to communicate to broader audiences. What artists can make a really catchy song that tells the story? Catchy enough to be played and streamed all over? Can Boots Riley make a follow up about one of the five million ways?

- Turn the trial of a murder of a health care exec into a trial of the health care system. Keep the focus on injustice and people dying because they'd being deprived of care. Tell their stories over and over. Find sympathetic media figures to amplify the message.

Please come up with more effective actions than these and act on them!
posted by euphorb at 7:47 AM on December 8, 2024 [14 favorites]

Those two additional photos look like they could be smiling guy, but it's increasingly hard to see how this could be the same guy in Starbucks, aka the guy who really does look like the shooter. Maybe the angle/lighting is deceiving me, but in Starbucks the shooter looks quite pink/pale, thin eyebrows, thin nose. Whereas smiling cutie and the two new photos look more olive skin, big eyebrows, more average nose.

I know this sounds wild, but given how planned this was - the casings, the monopoly money, the costume changes, the bike, etc - at this point I wouldn't be shocked that they're weren't two guys, one a decoy. Perhaps the cops/FBI know this, and are releasing both sets of photos in hopes that will bring in good info, but aren't revealing what they know in hopes it makes the shooter get sloppy.

Anyway, the crux of the article BungaDunga shared:

Anesthesia services are billed partially on the basis of how long a procedure takes. This creates an incentive for anesthesiologists to err on the side of exaggerating how long their services were required during an operation. And there is evidence that some anesthesiologists may engage in overbilling by overstating the length of a procedure, or the degree of risk a patient faces in undergoing anesthesia.

Starting in February, Anthem had planned to discourage overbilling by adopting a set of maximum time limits for procedures, inspired by data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. If an operation went long for medically necessary reasons, anesthesiologists could appeal for higher payment. But the process of reimbursement would be more arduous.

Critically, contrary to Sen. Murphy’s claims, this policy would not have saddled patients with surprise bills, if their operations went over time. The burden of this cost control would have fallen on participating anesthesiologists, not patients, according to Christopher Garmon, associate professor of health administration at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Henry W. Bloch School of Management.

A pediatrician responded to this with a long thread on Twitter. Here main critique boils down to this bit: "Here is a slide from the study that the vox article referenced that indicates what anesthesiologists find hard about their job. Besides the long hours and endless glut of regulations, it is 💯 true that despite a fair surprise medical billing law, anesthesiologists and other docs have to fight tooth and nail to get paid for work done because @HHSGov favored the insurers in the implementation of the law . They are fighting the 3rd party payers who were ALREADY paid by the patients. It's not the docs who are abrogating their duty to patients, it's the 3rd party payers who are, including our government."

Another person, summing up one of the points made by the pediatrician, "The sourcing for Levitz's claim that the aim was to lower anesthesiologists' fees consists of one economist employed by an insurance company. Vox also gets grant $$ from an insurance industry lobby group."

But then Matt Stoller points out "A key missing piece here is that anesthesiologists are organized by private equity firms who engage in monopolization, and FTC Chair Lina Khan is suing them over the matter."

So the TL:DR seems to me that, surprise, a health care system that pits caregivers (doctors) against middlemen that need to profit from that care (insurance companies) is always going to be inefficient. It's also not great that our system pays doctors essentially on commission, rather than just a salary like in other countries - give doctors zero incentive to "over care" and they won't do so. I don't doubt that anesthesiologists on the whole have over-billed insurance companies - it's in their best interest to do so. I also don't doubt that the insurance companies have made the paperwork required to get paid for work that goes over the usual surgery time limit is absurdly onerous. The fact that both insurance and doctors have powerful lobbying groups doesn't seem like it would help encourage either side to act reasonably.
posted by coffeecat at 8:42 AM on December 8, 2024 [16 favorites]

@babadookspinoza.bsky.social‬: I’m so serious in saying that the “How could you be so mean to the dead CEO?” people are actually dangerous, and will prove themselves so in the coming decade. The kind of mark who’ll rat on their own kind to their own oppressors for a gold star and a clear “conscience.”

Responses:

@newavenue.bsky.social: I don't fear the ones who do it in their own interest, I fear the ones who think it is the right thing to do.

@leftymathprof.bsky.social‬: We need to remind those people that "legality does not equal morality."

@altrocks.bsky.social‬: They'll be the prison guards and ICE agents processing us into camps because nothing is more important to them than following the law (as long as they agree with it).
posted by Wordshore at 8:49 AM on December 8, 2024 [14 favorites]

also when it comes to "surprise bills" I don't think it's a coincidence that the default example is "out-of-network anesthesiologist at your in-network hospital"
posted by BungaDunga at 8:50 AM on December 8, 2024 [5 favorites]

I do wonder whether the people lionizing the shooter will change their minds if it turns out he did it for QAnon reasons or similar
posted by BungaDunga at 8:51 AM on December 8, 2024 [1 favorite]

We need to remind those people that "legality does not equal morality."

I don't think it's weird to hold that vigilante justice is immoral even if it's understandable or even deserved. lots of people arguably deserve to be tortured, but it would be immoral to actually do it
posted by BungaDunga at 8:54 AM on December 8, 2024

If you're in NYC right now, I'd like to ask you for one thing:

organize a protest at the site of the stabbing of the two teenagers, and explicitly call on the NYPD to treat the murder with the same urgency and diligence that they've giving the murder of Thompson.
posted by ocschwar at 8:55 AM on December 8, 2024 [20 favorites]

like I think the death penalty should be abolished and it's not because all the guys on death row don't deserve the punishment.

a lot of people profess to be prison abolitionists and it's not because they don't think rapists and murders don't deserve to be punished
posted by BungaDunga at 8:56 AM on December 8, 2024

Re: the photos: I looked for a whole at the smiling Starbucks photo. It seems possible to me that there’s a disguise going on, especially the prominent, distinctive nose - could be fake. Also, I thought that the person could actually be female. Maybe they’re just young, but the skin, face shape, general dewy appearance kind of made me think “this could be a woman dressed as a man.”
posted by Miko at 8:59 AM on December 8, 2024 [3 favorites]

The "adjuster" took care to minimize the risk of a stray bullet.

His copycats will probably be spraying ammo from AR-15s.

That's what will probably end this bizarre moment in the nation's history.
posted by ocschwar at 9:02 AM on December 8, 2024 [1 favorite]

The smiling photo is in the hostel - the Starbucks photo is the one where we see the least of his face, and he's wearing the same jacket and backpack as we see in the video of the shooting.
posted by coffeecat at 9:02 AM on December 8, 2024

BungaDunga: "lots of people arguably deserve to be tortured"

what
posted by glonous keming at 9:14 AM on December 8, 2024 [7 favorites]

I don't think I believe anyone does, but you could argue it. How much does Assad deserve to suffer for what he's done in his life? Probably quite a lot. It would still be immoral to actually do it even if he does deserve it.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:18 AM on December 8, 2024

Also, concert tickets are hardly a life or death matter.

The artists, venues, staff and livelihoods that Ticket Bastard have fucked over for the last 3+ decades might think differently about that.

Also, art saves lives and is essential part of the human condition. It's not just a luxury. Culture is as important to humanity as food, err, well, bread.
posted by loquacious at 9:19 AM on December 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

like if you believe in a literal Hell that people deserve to go to- a lot of people do believe in it- then that's the sort of "deserve" I'm talking about
posted by BungaDunga at 9:19 AM on December 8, 2024

So, as a person on board with killing healthcare insurance CEOs (especially of a company as rotten as UHC), billionaires, and other people who belong to fundamentally anti-social categories (lobbyists for big oil, the members of the Sackler family complicit in the opioid epidemic, etc.), I don't think anyone deserves to be tortured. Torture produces nothing productive - it doesn't reveal useful information, it just causes people pain. Making people engaged in the worst anti-social behavior in our society right now fear for their lives unless they rectify that harm (or at least relinquish their wealth (i.e. ability to do further harm)) could, in theory, be productive.

Also, a lot of the foundational voices of prison abolition are clear that they are not saying we should immediately tear down all the prisons, but rather we should work towards building a society where prisons are not needed - as indeed was true for many societies in the past.

I am personally against the death penalty because I don't trust our justice system to fairly or accurately determine who is guilty of harm deserving of death. I mean, our legal system considers this healthcare insurance CEO to be completely innocent and the shooter to be deserving of life in prison - but I obviously disagree with that. And that's not even getting into all the ways the legal system discriminates by race, class, etc.

I mean, one of the fascinating parts of all of this is just how well it demonstrates what abolitionists and historians of policing have been pointing out for awhile now - that cops and the justice system are largely about protecting capital, not justice. Just a few days after the CEO got shot, two others were stabbed (one fatally) in a crime that was clearly a hate crime - they were migrants, they were asked if they "spoke English," and then after one said "no" he was murdered. This is barely being covered in the press, and no doubt the amount of resources being expended on this murder are infinitesimally small compared to the CEO. So yeah, I don't trust a justice system that values a CEO's life 1000x (or more) more than a migrant teen's life to be making decisions about who deserves to live or die.
posted by coffeecat at 9:29 AM on December 8, 2024 [22 favorites]

Torture produces nothing productive - it doesn't reveal useful information, it just causes people pain. Making people engaged in the worst anti-social behavior in our society right now fear for their lives unless they rectify that harm (or at least relinquish their wealth (i.e. ability to do further harm)) could, in theory, be productive.

okay but if "it could be productive" is the relevant metric, kidnapping and torturing a CEO live on YouTube would be at least as effective
posted by BungaDunga at 9:34 AM on December 8, 2024 [1 favorite]

there's no obvious reason to me why CEO murder is laudatory but CEO torture isn't

if anything, being horribly tortured to death would concentrate CEO's minds even more
posted by BungaDunga at 9:36 AM on December 8, 2024

kidnapping and torturing a CEO live on YouTube

On Shudder, surely.
posted by SPrintF at 9:36 AM on December 8, 2024

I guess when it comes down to it, I don't trust random chuds with guns and a grudge to dispense justice any more than I do when they're in a police uniform
posted by BungaDunga at 9:42 AM on December 8, 2024 [7 favorites]

Well, torture of a healthcare insurance CEO would cross a line for me, and I imagine other people too - maybe that's irrational, but it strikes me as unnecessary - people are afraid of dying enough, you don't need to add torture to the mix.

I don't trust random chuds with guns and a grudge to dispense justice

Agreed. But the reaction some of us are having (which others like yourself find confusing) is not to a random chud with a random gun/grudge, but this specific guy and his specific grudge.
posted by coffeecat at 9:49 AM on December 8, 2024 [6 favorites]

we don't know anything about him, which means everyone gets to project whatever they want onto him. I do understand the appeal, I just think it's misguided.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:51 AM on December 8, 2024 [3 favorites]

Yeah I agree. There’s a reason Milkshake Duck is a thing. Everyone loved Ken Bone for 5 minutes.
posted by girlmightlive at 9:53 AM on December 8, 2024 [3 favorites]

people are afraid of dying enough, you don't need to add torture to the mix.

Well, subtract the death and just keep the torture. Would that still be worse than shooting him dead? You still have all the theoretical benefits of scared CEOs and he gets the opportunity to repent and give all his ill-gotten gains to charity instead of his heirs. But this involves doing a bit of abu Ghraib-adjacent stuff.

It's weird that literal cold-blooded revenge murder doesn't read to some people as impermissible violence while torture does. I guess I understand why- it's easier to watch, for one. But it's still weird.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:57 AM on December 8, 2024

Speaking of motives, it's rather alarming to see NYPD/police in general seems so incompetent without public/amateur help (based on my understanding that's there's an emergent behaviour of "not snitching") because between the bullet casings and the Monopoly money, the getaway vehicle being a (city) bike, choosing a spot with high concentration of CCTVs, I would say it's quite reasonable to assume that the shooter (the Adjuster?) wants to be caught. I'm really quite partial to the theory that he wants a trial to bring up more stuff.
posted by cendawanita at 10:15 AM on December 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

Preventing people from getting treatment and medication that they need is also torture.

People are talking a lot about all the unnecessary deaths due to unjustified denials by UHC and other insurers, but for every person who dies for lack of treatment, there's many more who suffer in pain, stress and despair for years.

> Torture produces nothing productive - it doesn't reveal useful information, it just causes people pain

This isn't true. In this instance it made them a great deal of money.
posted by automatronic at 10:15 AM on December 8, 2024 [6 favorites]

Well, we know he took the time to write an anti-health insurance message on the casings, and that he's anti-capitalist greed (the Monopoly money). Sure, lot's we don't know, but I wouldn't say it's pure projection. But no doubt, if it turns out he was actually commissioned by Blackwater to commit a murder so that they could get more private security contracts, then he ceases to be a folk hero.

Well, subtract the death and just keep the torture. Would that still be worse than shooting him dead? You still have all the theoretical benefits of scared CEOs and he gets the opportunity to repent and give all his ill-gotten gains to charity instead of his heirs.

Maybe this will feel like a cop-out to you, but I'm struggling to understand how this would logistically work. I know I've entertained some far-fetched futures in this thread, but regular citizens setting up some long-term torture camp for healthcare CEOs without detection from authorities seems an impossible stretch. Likewise, if we go full fiction, and imagine a future international prison that makes a list of people worldwide by wealth, and then arrests them one by one giving them the option to either redistribute that wealth or be locked up and tortured a bit until they do, well, it's hard for me to imagine anyone who wouldn't choose freedom over wealth considering they wouldn't benefit from that wealth in prison anyway. I mean, think of how much money rich people spend on lawyers to avoid jail time.

I guess the TL:DR is that I can imagine scenarios where the threat of death is an effective form of disciplined political violence, but I struggle to imagine a scenario where torture is not just someone being sadistic.
posted by coffeecat at 10:17 AM on December 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

Someone did the math and figured that Brian Thompson killed about 10 people per day and had been doing so for his entire tenure as CEO.

Perhaps, just a crazy thought, this is why people aren't really all that upset that Thompson was killed? Like, generally when a mass murderer is killed we're not exactly happy, but we're usually not really sad either.

I'm not saying we should emulate The Adjuster here, yet I can't help but note that after he did his good deed other insurance companies have backed off some of their more awful policies. Remind them that there is a limit to how far they can push people and suddenly they stop pushing so hard.
posted by sotonohito at 10:25 AM on December 8, 2024 [12 favorites]

I can still be glad Hitler is dead even if the guy that shot Hitler was a literal Nazi... ;)
Sometimes the people who cause the change aren't perfect saints; So what. He may be a milkshake duck, IDGAF.

The fact our society is ascribing the insurance situation as a motive (and it seems likely what with the shell casings, and general "vibe" of the country)... Means it's struck a chord. You can naysay all you want, you can whine about the morality, you can call us monsters for feeling schadenfreude.

But that's being as in denial about the situation as the CEOs who put us in this place.

The question is : What are WE going to do about it? Even more important: HOW? I am not saying take up arms and kill. But clearly, "Obamacare" sold us out and the world STILL hates the private insurance companies. So what's next? Just let the CEO's hunker down and make change that much harder? Whinge harder? Scold harder? Vote harder? Push for Single Payer? Just keep doing the same old same old?

I'll say I am REALLY disappointed (though not surprised) the way the media is reporting on this, like one of their fun dopaminergic hype stories, focusing on the side story (the death of a CEO) and not the main event (the shitty health denial system in this country).

Maybe, instead of whinging we can learn something ,maybe we can start calling health denial what it is instead of "healthcare" (when healthcare is reserved for the people who actually PROVIDE it, not the assholes who suck up billions of dollars in profit to deny it).

Just as shooting at someone solves nothing, neither does scolding people about it online. Study of philosophy, something something -- "the point is to change it". So. again. What are we gonna do?
posted by symbioid at 10:58 AM on December 8, 2024 [10 favorites]

It's weird that literal cold-blooded revenge murder doesn't read to some people as impermissible violence while torture does.

It feels like the same psychology that allows us to have cozy mysteries where spry old ladies solve murders, but can not really imagine cozy torture mysteries where spry old ladies stumble across scenes like something out of Martyrs.

We have a careful elision of reality going on when we celebrate America's New Boyfriend, because we don't see anything after the shooting. If we were forced to ride in the ambulance with Brian Thompson as he gagged on his own blood, if we had to see the fear and pain in his eyes be replaced by something more primal and stark, if we had to hear the ragged choking of his last breaths, we would not be able to celebrate. We have, consciously or unconsciously, decided as a nation that his murder was quick, and that any suffering he went through was not out of bounds of what we would find permissible if we had seen it. We are lying to ourselves about that, maybe necessarily, in the same way we lie to ourselves about a lot of deaths.

But insisting on torture removes that ability. For torture, you have to stick around and watch. The time element will not allow itself to be elided. Our ability to forgive diminishes in proportion to the lengthy inhumanity of the act. It's why so much of our own state's torture apparatus must remain hidden from us. We couldn't bear it.

And yeah, it's all extremely weird. Like, we joke about guillotines, but those executions were public affairs attending by as many people as could pack in to see the death. We still show up in droves when someone we don't like gets the electric chair or lethal injection, even if we're not allowed in, not allowed to see. We have some kind of--it's not ethics clearly, but some kind of internal compass to let us know what horrors we consider acceptable and which must be shunned.
posted by mittens at 11:17 AM on December 8, 2024 [9 favorites]

If we were forced to ride in the ambulance with Brian Thompson as he gagged on his own blood, if we had to see the fear and pain in his eyes be replaced by something more primal and stark, if we had to hear the ragged choking of his last breaths, we would not be able to celebrate.

Speak for self, buddy.
posted by corb at 11:45 AM on December 8, 2024 [16 favorites]

I saw this latex face mask and wonder whether it could have been used by the killer. They are somewhat similar.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:02 PM on December 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

“Peaceful Solutions,” A.R. Moxon, The Reframe, 08 December 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 12:06 PM on December 8, 2024 [2 favorites]

BungaDunga: "I do wonder whether the people lionizing the shooter will change their minds if it turns out he did it for QAnon reasons or similar"

I don't expect that I'll think much of the guy when he's caught, nor do I have much illusion that this is likely to lead to any positive long-term change, but all the tut-tutting and 'how has Metafilter come to this' in the world isn't going to make me sad that a monster is dead. Especially with all the people going on about how we should have let the rule of law take care of it, because all of Brian Thompson's murders were entirely legal under our current 'rule of law'.
posted by tavella at 12:08 PM on December 8, 2024 [12 favorites]

A piano could have fallen on the guy and the piano wouldn't even have had to have good politics or look fuckable for me to be pleased.
posted by phunniemee at 12:09 PM on December 8, 2024 [23 favorites]

Here’s the thing. It’s easy enough for us to read about the events and opine about whether killing and torture are justified. But at least part of the reason murder and torture are condemned by the vast majority of moral systems is that taking these actions is not just bad for the person who is the target, but also the person doing the targeting. Moral injury is a real thing; it is one of the underlying contributors to PTSD, and it destroys lives, warps judgment, and ruins personal peace. This is hard enough on veterans and others whose use of violence is sanctioned and structured, let alone on people who have taken it upon themselves to kill and torture (and who are not sociopaths). Even retribution is not actually satisfying.
posted by Miko at 12:31 PM on December 8, 2024 [8 favorites]

A piano could have fallen on the guy and the piano wouldn't even have had to have good politics or look fuckable for me to be pleased.

see that's the thing, being glad a guy had a road runner accident doesn't bother me in the same way cheerleading cold blooded murder does, especially sentiments like (paraphrasing) actually I'd quite like to watch him bleed out

I'm not immune to elaborate revenge fantasies but it turns out I find elaborate revenge realities somewhat disturbing
posted by BungaDunga at 12:43 PM on December 8, 2024 [2 favorites]

Moral injury is a real thing; it is one of the underlying contributors to PTSD, and it destroys lives, warps judgment, and ruins personal peace.

You get moral injury when what you've done is morally wrong. There aren't a lot of incidents of moral injury for liberators of concentration camps who killed camp guards, for example.

This man killed thousands of people by his brutal policies. It's not just retribution, it's actively stopping him from killing more, in the hope that others aware there might be consequences will kill less people with their denials. This killing was far more justified than any I or anyone I know participated in during the Iraq War.
posted by corb at 12:46 PM on December 8, 2024 [9 favorites]

You get moral injury when what you've done is morally wrong. There aren't a lot of incidents of moral injury for liberators of concentration camps who killed camp guards, for example.

Hangman of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann dies

He explained that after the deed was done, he was told to load the corpse into an oven for cremation, but his hands were shaking and he was unable to walk unaided.

For some time afterwards he suffered from PTSD and nightmares.

posted by BungaDunga at 12:50 PM on December 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

(idk if he experienced moral injury but he experienced something terrible. as an empirical matter killing seems to hurt the people who do it even when they're justified)
posted by BungaDunga at 12:55 PM on December 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

You get moral injury when what you've done is morally wrong. There aren't a lot of incidents of moral injury for liberators of concentration camps who killed camp guards, for example.

This man killed thousands of people by his brutal policies. It's not just retribution, it's actively stopping him from killing more, in the hope that others aware there might be consequences will kill less people with their denials. This killing was far more justified than any I or anyone I know participated in during the Iraq War.

If I'm reading this correctly, you have personally killed people as a member of the US Military during the Iraq War? You are also saying that morality is a fixed point that grants some killers immunity from PTSD? If that is the case, I am sorry for your experiences and hope you can find peace from your past.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 12:59 PM on December 8, 2024 [1 favorite]

it's actively stopping him from killing more, in the hope that others aware there might be consequences will kill less people with their denials.

Claims denials didn’t stop these past few days because these choices of which claims to deny are pretty disconnected from any individual CEO.they were decided years ago by other people who are more likely to be making $50k than be millionaires.

It’s one thing I appreciated about AOC years ago. She’s one of the few people who acknowledged that as much as we need to dismantle and change this system, we need to figure out what to do with the millions of people who are supported by it. And it’s true, this system still supports millions of jobs in addition to people who actually do like their insurance and don’t want to give it up. A lot of our system is actually appealing to the false superiority of individualism that Americans fancy themselves having.
posted by girlmightlive at 1:04 PM on December 8, 2024 [12 favorites]

making examples of people was the same logic behind the terrorist killings of abortion providers, and it mostly didn't work, but capturing state power did
posted by BungaDunga at 1:15 PM on December 8, 2024 [1 favorite]

beginning to see how the NYPD took so long to find the backpack
posted by BungaDunga at 1:24 PM on December 8, 2024 [4 favorites]

If I'm reading this correctly, you have personally killed people as a member of the US Military during the Iraq War? You are also saying that morality is a fixed point that grants some killers immunity from PTSD?

I have provided targeting for others to be killed as a member of the US military during the Iraq War; my partner and many of my friends, as combat infantrymen, have killed others personally with their own hands and weapons. I am intimately familiar with moral injury and post traumatic stress in a way such that it annoys me when people bring it out as a lolzy point without truly understanding it; I apologize if I gave a glib response that didn't fully explain as a part of my annoyance.

PTSD can exist both with and without moral injury and is triggered by a set of circumstances that includes the danger. It is highly likely that the shooter will have PTSD if not from the killing itself, from the active manhunt being launched against him. PTSD with moral injury, however, is one of the most severe, persistent, and more difficult to heal forms of PTSD, causing the most substance use and suicidal ideation and completion and it isn't generally created simply by the act of killing.
posted by corb at 1:28 PM on December 8, 2024 [13 favorites]

they're called "executives" for a reason
posted by glonous keming at 2:02 PM on December 8, 2024 [5 favorites]

You get moral injury when what you've done is morally wrong. There aren't a lot of incidents of moral injury for liberators of concentration camps who killed camp guards, for example.

I beg to differ.

As the first presence from the outside world, the Allied liberators presented a dual reality for detainees in concentration camps. Jorges Semprún, a Spanish communist and political activist interned in Buchenwald, wrote in his memoir “Writing or Life” that prisoners attained long-awaited freedom, but the way some liberators treated them reinforced the idea that they had become less than human. “It’s the horror in my eyes that’s revealing the horror in theirs,” he wrote of his first encounter with British soldiers. “If their eyes were mirrors, it seems I’m not far from dead.” At the beginning of their internment, prisoners who weren’t selected for the gas chamber learned quickly from Nazi guards that they weren’t viewed as humans but as animals. Orders were barked, compassion was nonexistent. Semprún hadn’t expected that his liberators would view him in the same way.

“Oh, he buried it all those years,” the wife of Maurice Paper told me about her husband’s memories of Dachau. General Eisenhower, remembering Paper’s fluency in Yiddish and German from his having served in Africa on the general’s staff, ordered him to Dachau to serve as an interpreter for the prisoners and liberating GIs. Paper found himself not only having to convince the skeletal Jews that he himself was Jewish but to tell them that they could not leave the camp and would have to wait 48 hours before medical care, food, and clothing would arrive. His words brought terrible wails of frustration from the newly liberated prisoners

Your definition isn't correct, though. It's not moral injury when something is "morally wrong" (which just leads to the question, according to whom?) but when something goes contrary to your own personal sense of right and wrong and/or the normative beliefs around you. Which is why in combat, things can seem justifiable that back at home, years later, in the middle of the night, are definitely not.

A lot of effort has been put toward finding work-arounds for this in the military to try to quell the natural and normal objections to the need to commit moral wrongs when in military service. They haven't convinced the psychologists and families who deal with epidemic levels of veteran PTSD and suicide. Those making with the Big Talk here don't convince me either, and the link you posted, corb, is the exact same one I gave above. I will also ask you to put away crap like "lolzy point without truly understanding it" because you know nothing about me or my family and trust me, I have more than one reason to know about PTSD and moral injury from military service, despite the fact that I don't go around waving it in the air to get cred.

This assassination isn't enough to stop business as usual. It's not stopping anything. Shareholders remain in charge. The only way to turn profit remains denying care. Let's talk in two months about whether this was a turning point.
posted by Miko at 2:21 PM on December 8, 2024 [15 favorites]

it's rather alarming to see NYPD/police in general seems so incompetent

This might not be reassuring, but that’s pretty much par for the course.

Fewer than half of murders in NYC result in charges being brought against a suspect. Even fewer than that result in arrest and conviction.

We spent $11bn a year on our police force, but getting away with murder is the status quo.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 2:50 PM on December 8, 2024 [7 favorites]

If you really want to improve people’s empathetic response to harm, I can point you to about 30 things in your own living space that were made by people who make less money than you and have fewer rights than you. Feel free to lecture yourself about that and leave the rest of us alone.

Frankly, I think that most of the people who are horrified by the situation and by people’s responses to the situation identify with this guy and either think or feel that his death is more important than other deaths as a result. That’s all well and good but given the relative power structures involved, lecturing people like you’re doing so from some kind of moral high ground…you’re really not. You’re trying to assert a type of exploitative “morality” that places certain powerful people at the center of our consideration and pushes other people to the side.
posted by knobknosher at 3:35 PM on December 8, 2024 [7 favorites]

either think or feel that his death is more important than other deaths as a result.

Hold on, a bunch of people are insisting that his death is more important, because of who he was. That's why they think it was justifiable to do it. If his death wasn't important then it was just another murder. The only way it could be justifiable is if it were somehow important.
posted by BungaDunga at 3:50 PM on December 8, 2024 [1 favorite]

I have been thinking recently about how we are in a new modern gilded age. Modern mansions, fleets of cars, large amount of staff, multiple homes--beach home, city 82nd floor home, mountain home, private planes, full security staff, vacation of private islands........how long can this last? So much dirty money flowing around, in both the "legitimate" economy AND the black market.

It so interesting to watch these machinations, and the infinite positioning of the main stream media to keep them from being exposed. Imagine if the NY Times spent as much money on diagraming the getaway of the new folk hero, on diagram showing the hoovering of money from the big bottom to the tiny top.
posted by tarantula at 3:51 PM on December 8, 2024 [7 favorites]

Hold on, a bunch of people are insisting that his death is more important, because of who he was. That's why they think it was justifiable to do it. If his death wasn't important then it was just another murder. The only way it could be justifiable is if it were somehow important.

You got me on that one. To be more specific, I think it’s more important to you personally in the sense that you have more empathy for him than you do for literally millions of other people. Selective empathy is completely normal and is healthy way of keeping ourselves sane in a big world. But if you’re trying to convince people that their selective empathy is wrong, you should be doing it in a different direction.
posted by knobknosher at 3:56 PM on December 8, 2024 [5 favorites]

I also don’t buy the slippery slope argument that this is kind of thing is going to make us stop caring about human life as a society. We already have school shootings, FFS, and people like the guy who was killed here contributed daily to the death of an enormous number of people. Perhaps ironically, this is a step towards caring about the death and suffering of other people.
posted by knobknosher at 3:58 PM on December 8, 2024 [7 favorites]

Let's talk in two months about whether this was a turning point.

We are already at a turning point. The question is only whether we move towards a more just and equitable healthcare system, or if our system goes the other way, taking extreme measures to protect elites from violent retaliation. Either way, it seems clear we're not going to be the same going forwards, be it two days or two months or even two years from now.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:01 PM on December 8, 2024 [5 favorites]

Maybe the real slippery slope is all the school shootings and mass shooting events the CEO's shooter casually just had to live through while he was going up.
posted by phunniemee at 4:33 PM on December 8, 2024 [30 favorites]

Personally, I’m just annoyed by people trotting out “think of his victims” to justify their jokes and celebration when the only thing they’ve ever had to offer his victims is condolences instead of the hard work of actual advocacy. Like, sure, I totally get it’s way easier to spout off jokes on Twitter or Bluesky than to help your disabled friend make phone calls to get their meds covered or to spread info about hospital financial assistance programs or to involve yourself with an advocacy organization, but at least admit it’s about making you feel better and leave us direct victims out of it.

[If this post does not describe you, then it’s not about you.]
posted by brook horse at 4:59 PM on December 8, 2024 [2 favorites]

IDK what a "direct victim" is but literally tens of millions of people have been fucked over or had a family member or friend fucked over by this guy and/or his organization specifically and pretty much everyone else in the US has empathy for those people, either because they are just generally decent or, much more likely, because they have also been in a similar situation with a different health insurance company. I don't know if you saw the statistic about the number of Americans in medical debt or not? It's not like there are four or five people who were victimized and everyone else is piling on because they're bored or something.

I mean I personally have some horrific stories to tell but ultimately I have to admit that that doesn't make me special or part of a small group that is more deserving of cheer
posted by knobknosher at 5:23 PM on December 8, 2024 [5 favorites]

It's weird that literal cold-blooded revenge murder doesn't read to some people as impermissible violence while torture does.

We've also been more likely to be tortured--including by health insurance companies denying us and our loved ones health care that could keep us from being in pain or keep us alive. So I guess people are just more sympathetic about things they've actually been through

Even without that, it seems much worse to most people to torture someone than to just kill them because one includes prolonged suffering while the other doesn't. I don't think this is an unusual or surprising moral distinction, whether or not I agree with it.
posted by knobknosher at 5:32 PM on December 8, 2024 [3 favorites]

> If we were forced to ride in the ambulance with Brian Thompson as he gagged on his own blood, if we had to see the fear and pain in his eyes be replaced by something more primal and stark, if we had to hear the ragged choking of his last breaths, we would not be able to celebrate.

It's true, there is very little room to crunk back there.
posted by lucidium at 5:58 PM on December 8, 2024 [16 favorites]

If we were forced to ride in the ambulance with Brian Thompson as he gagged on his own blood, if we had to see the fear and pain in his eyes be replaced by something more primal and stark, if we had to hear the ragged choking of his last breaths, we would not be able to celebrate.

no

but see, if he'd survived, do you think he'd find himself close to bankruptcy from the bills? do you think he'd be arguing with his insurance company about the necessity of some treatment? do you think he'd find critical life-saving medications being questioned by the insurance company, which would argue for a cheaper version that didn't work as well and might end up causing sepsis?

i for one am not really celebrating his death. but when someone leads an organization that oversees death panels determining who gets what treatment, often without care for what the doctors on the ground are seeing, that has led to thousands of deaths and many more immiserated?

people think his death is important because the media, the cops, the businesses are treating it as important. they're the ones putting up monetary rewards for people to snitch on this dude's murderer. you know who's deaths aren't important? two migrant teens stabbed, one dead, just a day earlier, in the same city, apparently because they weren't speaking english. no manhunt. no big reward. nobody's talking about the fear and pain in their eyes, the ragged choking of their last breaths. they're just statistics. also they probably don't have insurance.

fuck a dead ceo. he bled just like the rest of us, but he had a direct hand in an organization that makes others bleed more.
posted by i used to be someone else at 6:29 PM on December 8, 2024 [23 favorites]

But insisting on torture removes that ability. For torture, you have to stick around and watch. The time element will not allow itself to be elided. Our ability to forgive diminishes in proportion to the lengthy inhumanity of the act. It's why so much of our own state's torture apparatus must remain hidden from us. We couldn't bear it.

speaking of torture, what counts?

is it sticking around and watching and experiencing the back and forth between a patient and the insurance company that determines whether or not said patient will receive the treatment they need? is it trying to understand what the difference is between predetermination and preauthorization while navigating a kafkaesque bureaucracy where not even the advocates know what the proper steps are in making the care affordable? is it the agony of watching this play out over months or years? is it watching the insurance company decide that it's only going to pay a fraction of the cost, keeping the actual treatment out of reach? is it watching people continually defer their own health because it's too expensive, only to have it come back and crush them like the mta's maintenance bill?

we say medical decisions should be between the patient and the doctor, but if we're being honest, it's really between the patient and the insurance company's death panel that decides whether the treatment is necessary.

witnessing these, experiencing these, hearing these stories in a handful of little whispers and curses, echoed by a cacophany of thousands, of millions of voices who have borne this lengthy inhumanity for decades?

you're right. we can't bear it.

fuck a dead ceo.
posted by i used to be someone else at 6:48 PM on December 8, 2024 [11 favorites]

As charming as this torture discussion is, this dude remains got away with it.
posted by East14thTaco at 7:05 PM on December 8, 2024 [1 favorite]

IDK what a "direct victim" is but literally tens of millions of people have been fucked over or had a family member or friend fucked over by this guy and/or his organization specifically and pretty much everyone else in the US has empathy for those people

Cool, so those who “have empathy” can stop using those of us who have been fucked over by him specifically to justify their cheering if they’re not going to do anything to help us. By all means have cheer, but stop using “his victims” (such as those of us who were actually denied critical care by UHC’s AI decision making, which most people didn’t give a fuck about when it started happening and still don’t except when they can use it as a sound bite) as pawns in your argument, because it makes the fact that you aren’t doing anything to help us that much more obvious.

If this doesn’t describe you, then my post is not about you. But it describes a lot of people who didn’t do shit for seriously ill and disabled people before, who still aren’t doing shit for us now, and yet cannot keep us out of their mouths when defending their right to celebrate. I just want them to own it instead of invoking me and people like me while ignoring our realities the rest of the time.
posted by brook horse at 7:15 PM on December 8, 2024 [1 favorite]

Like this is a pretty basic thing, victims generally don’t like it when people use their victimization to make a point while doing nothing to help them. And UHC has a lot of victims, and we are now having to deal with a bunch of people who went “oh that sucks, but anyway” at us when we were directly victimized suddenly having sooo much to say on the subject. But not actually to help advocate or spread resources and support, just to defend their personal right to celebrate.

Which isn’t immoral or anything, but it is, as I said, annoying if you have, say recently lost employment and become further disabled directly and unequivocally due to actions by UHC.
posted by brook horse at 7:25 PM on December 8, 2024 [2 favorites]

I just saw someone connect these two dots elsewhere and it gave food for thought -

Maybe other CEOs will be so frightened of a possible attack that the start a lobby group that finally shuts down the NRA and gives us proper gun control
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:33 PM on December 8, 2024 [6 favorites]

There's a thread going around social media about a lawyer who was illegally denied Humira for her chronic disease (IBD, I think) and when they cut her off, the fight took so long she got cancer, and is still dealing with the financial problems this all caused her. She was on UHC.

I was on Humira on UHC for a year and change and I lived with the stress about how much it would cost (beyond our means to pay, and we're doing pretty well) the whole time I was on it. My inflammation numbers may have skyrocketed to the point my rheumatologist put me on Humira because I already had cancer (gone now, thanks) but I know the stress of worrying about when my insurance company was going to fuck me over. Now I'm on a different insurance plan so I worry less, but the worry and the stress is part of being a person with chronic illness. We're lucky but luck is the reason I'm not one of those people who got more seriously ill or died because of UHC's fuckery.

All these super-rich folks who wanted to go back to the Gilded Age (no regulations, massive inequality) forgot that regular assassination of the super-rich was also a feature of that period in the US and Europe.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:32 PM on December 8, 2024 [15 favorites]

If we were forced to ride in the ambulance with Brian Thompson as he gagged on his own blood

I would be very upset, ambulance rides are expensive
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:46 PM on December 8, 2024 [13 favorites]

But it describes a lot of people who didn’t do shit for seriously ill and disabled people before, who still aren’t doing shit for us now, and yet cannot keep us out of their mouths when defending their right to celebrate.

Unless you have died because of denied care, I'm not sure people have been having trouble keeping you out of their mouths? There's not been a lot of focus on disabled or seriously ill people, more on dead ones. Anyone could end up denied emergency care in the ER regardless of their prior health status, were they to break a bone or get shot or get appendicitis, or anything. When people have given examples, it's generally been themselves, or acute emergency care being denied, not their disabled friend.
posted by Dysk at 10:49 PM on December 8, 2024 [7 favorites]

Cool, so those who “have empathy” can stop using those of us who have been fucked over by him specifically to justify their cheering if they’re not going to do anything to help us.

I don't really get the scare quotes. People who weren't specifically fucked over by UHC almost guaranteed have been fucked over by other insurance companies and have empathy, that's not really a scare quote kind of thing. That's actual real empathy that comes from personal experience even if it's not the exact same thing. Like, I have mobility and chronic pain issues, so I "have empathy" for people who have similar issues even if they're not the same ones. I have empathy for people disabled for other reasons, enough to be happy when something good happens for them. That's not fake scare quote empathy.

Honestly I find this kind of narrowing of who is allowed to join in with what cause and for what motivation to be anti-solidarity and anti-progress. I get that it likely comes from a real emotional place and not a desire to fuck with anyone, but I think the overall effect is negative.
posted by knobknosher at 1:05 AM on December 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

The scare quotes are because I don’t find it empathetic for people to trot out UHC’s AI denials, step therapy policies, and a host of things that disabled individuals have been yelling about for ages but which was met with silence and lack of support then, and still is met with no support now. People saying their cheering is them “having empathy” for victims while doing literally nothing to help us in the past and present is what pisses me off. UHC destroyed my life and I remember how many people shrugged and went, “sucks to be you” when I brought up the AI denials repeatedly in the past year since it came out. To suddenly have many of them want to talk about it but only in service of justifying their emotional reactions is not what I would call empathy.

It’s not about not being “the right kind of person” before being allowed to celebrate. It’s saying, if you aren’t going to do anything to help his victims then stop trotting us out as if you haven’t been ignoring and leaving us to die the whole time.

If you haven’t been doing that then this isn’t about you. For context my work was in healthcare, so I witnessed a lot of people actively ignore this shit until they had this viral thing to cheer about, while still not doing anything to actually help. I don’t think that calling that obnoxious is anti-solidarity.
posted by brook horse at 3:35 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Even people who weren't in the Resistance were allowed to cheer the end of nazi occupations as the second world at ended, were allowed to cheer Resistance actions. The price of entry for being allowed to have an opinion on something is not having taken action yourself.
posted by Dysk at 3:54 AM on December 9, 2024 [13 favorites]

Once again as I’ve said over and over again, you’re allowed to cheer! But pointing to the people you (general you) left to die and continue to leave to die while you do is annoying.

People are allowed to have an opinion and talk about how terrible it is we’re dying while ignoring us begging them for help, and I’m allowed to find them obnoxious for it. It’s fine, they’ll survive.
posted by brook horse at 4:02 AM on December 9, 2024

Brook horse, It seems to me you’re saying that people are trotting folks with disabilities and chronic conditions as pawns or mascots to say “Look at how the system has failed!” When actually people are saying “The system has failed me personally/this loved one of mine [in such and such a way].” This isn’t really a situation of having Sarah McLachlan singing a sad song over footage of victims in a tv commercial to elicit sympathy; it’s millions upon millions of people who are pissed about the medical system failing them and people no further than a degree of separation, too. I don’t think anyone is trying to erase the suffering of people with disabilities/chronic conditions who aren’t getting the care they need. They are speaking up about their own personal stories.

Saying that people who aren’t actively protesting or working toward some greater healthcare good or whatever, saying that they can’t actively have an opinion on this matter personally because they aren’t out doing the work is gate keeping and disingenuous; most people are just trying to keep a roof over their head, food in their families’ bellies, and try and maybe enjoy life a little bit. Not everyone has the physical and mental bandwidth to devote their precious little spare time to trying to make the world a better place. And that’s ok. But getting annoyed at people and lashing out at them for being on the right side of an issue, but not for the exact right reasons seems to be counterproductive at best.
posted by HVACDC_Bag at 4:22 AM on December 9, 2024 [14 favorites]

Maybe other CEOs will be so frightened of a possible attack that the start a lobby group that finally shuts down the NRA and gives us proper gun control

Given the incoming administration, I think the likeliest major impact to American public health that comes out of this is a national mask ban.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:38 AM on December 9, 2024 [14 favorites]

It’s not about the people who are sharing personal stories. It’s the ones who are using other people’s stories to say, “I’m justified in cheering because of all these people he’s hurt” when they’ve actively ignored those hurt people until they became a convenient justification for their opinions.

Literally all I am asking is for people to have their opinions without parading out the people they would otherwise happily ignore. That’s not “being on the right side” of the issue, that’s jumping on a viral bandwagon and dropping us under the wheels when they’re done.

It’s simple: if you don’t have the bandwidth to help victims, then just speak from your own experience and don’t use them to justify your emotions and opinions. As many people have said the healthcare system affects everyone so that should be easy to do. If you want to post about how terrible this is for his victims specifically as justification for your own emotional reaction, maybe throw $10 to a local patient advocacy organization first, or send around a video about how to get financial assistance at a hospital, or literally anything that helps victims.

If you haven’t been ignoring the victims this whole time, or you have for bandwidth reasons but you aren’t trotting out UHC’s specific actions that have victimized people to justify your emotional reaction, then I’m not talking about you.
posted by brook horse at 4:53 AM on December 9, 2024

To be clear while everyone is under the threat of American healthcare the people I’m talking about typically come from a position of privilege. Like people whose parents bought them their house cash kind of privilege. Healthy childless couples with no debt and combined 250k salaries in low COL areas. You run into a lot of people doing healthcare as a passion project while their spouse makes bank off a business degree out here, idk. They’re well-meaning socially aware liberals but that mostly translates to outrage at the latest news at The Horrors of Being Poor in America and little actual support for the poor people five feet in front of them. That’s the thing that’s annoying. They can have opinions but if they’ve been ignoring the victims in front of them the whole time I’ll roll my eyes.

If this doesn’t describe you etc.
posted by brook horse at 5:26 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

That’s the thing that’s annoying.

Thank you for explaining that; I was having trouble following.
posted by mittens at 5:30 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Brook horse, I guess I’m just fortunate that my circles don’t overlap with that kind of do-gooder, white savior type, so I don’t really see that kind of virtue signaling. My circles tend to be the people whose faces have what often feels like the permanent boot print of capital tattooed on them. All the commentary I’ve been around has been from people directly affected by medical industry fuckery. I see how dealing with that would be infuriating. Best wishes.
posted by HVACDC_Bag at 5:33 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

Duffelblog: Ex Army Sniper Prepares for Potential VA Healthcare Cuts:

The move comes amid reports that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to lead a so-called "Department of Government Efficiency," confirmed that they plan to target "unauthorized" federal spending — a category that includes the VA's medical services.

"I’m just a simple guy who spent years defending this country and acquiring a very particular set of skills," said Wallace while meticulously cleaning his .308 Remington rifle at his kitchen table. "But hey, if the incoming administration says I’ve been living too large off a disability check that doesn’t cover my increasing rent year to year, who am I to argue with a draft dodger’s perspective on my amputated leg?"

posted by corb at 6:05 AM on December 9, 2024 [13 favorites]

We have a careful elision of reality going on when we celebrate America's New Boyfriend, because we don't see anything after the shooting. If we were forced to ride in the ambulance with Brian Thompson as he gagged on his own blood, if we had to see the fear and pain in his eyes be replaced by something more primal and stark, if we had to hear the ragged choking of his last breaths, we would not be able to celebrate.

How about if we've watched a loved one gag and choke to death on something else and the fear and pain in their eyes be replaced by something primal because they had been denied life-saving treatment by their health insurance company?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:20 AM on December 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

I guess I’m just fortunate that my circles don’t overlap with that kind of do-gooder, white savior type, so I don’t really see that kind of virtue signaling. My circles tend to be the people whose faces have what often feels like the permanent boot print of capital tattooed on them

Yeah, that is my primary social circle as well but my career is weird in that it pays like shit and the people in it are either passionate about it and grew up poor so can handle living on minimum wage, or are passionate about it and their spouse or their parents (usually both) make six figure salaries so it doesn’t matter what they get paid. I’ve sat at a table where the person to my left drove a car old enough to vote with half of it falling off most of the time, and the person to my right drove a brand new Jeep that she bought to hitch her horse trailer to. We all had the exact same job and salaries. It’s an… interesting place to be whenever healthcare in America comes up. This is often a truly well meaning type of person, some of whom I genuinely consider my friends, but they do sometimes annoy the shit out of me, and they all seem to have a lot to say right now while I’m waiting to find out if I’ll have to repeat my med destabilization incident less than six months later, so I’m grouchy, sorry.
posted by brook horse at 6:27 AM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

I get it brook horse. I hate people who jump on the bandwagon as well. And I hate it I'm scolded for imposing purity tests on bandwagon jumpers. But as long as people are jumping on this particular bandwagon and not using their newfound sympathy to push back against reform or co-opt it in a direction that is more beneficial for themselves, I guess it's ok?

Besides, I think you might find that privilege is already so correlated with how shocked, shocked people are about the murder itself that there aren't many in this group left to act in the ways you're describing.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:45 AM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

> Duffelblog: Ex Army Sniper Prepares for Potential VA Healthcare Cuts

I'm not sure whether I'm relieved or disappointed to discover that this was (probably) satire.
posted by Slothrup at 7:00 AM on December 9, 2024

Slothrup, Duffelblog is basically a military counterpart to The Onion.
posted by McCoy Pauley at 7:13 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

I think one thing worth noting here is that the Republican voters are ALSO generally not sympathizing with Thompson, and that brings us back the part where a lot of people said they voted Republican not out of any particular love of Trump but due to economics and a general feeling that voting Trump was a way of striking back at the elites.

That's entirely wrong of course, voting for a rich grifter is hardly going to stick it to the man. But that's the pattern Fascism has always followed: the left finds a problem, almost everyone agrees it's a problem, but then most people say "eeew leftists" and reject the leftist solution. After which a Fascist comes along and tells people that Fascism is the solution.

You can argue, possibly even correctly, that the Democratic Party shouldn't move left just because a) the left is right about the problem, and b) the left has a solution that will work. But you can't argue that the problem doesn't exist, that people don't feel righteously angry about the problem, and that ignoring the problem or presenting milkquetoast centrist baby step "solutions" will appeal to anyone but a tiny handful of people at the DC cocktail party circuit.

Trump is lying when he says he's a solution, but dumb as he is Trump is smarter than pretty much every single Democrat out there in that he recognizes that talking about the problem and proposing big sweeping stuff will energize people in a way that mincing little baby steps and 1/1000000th of a loaf approaches don't.

If the Democrats are going to survive they need to see the murder of Brian Thompson, and the wide acclaim that murder was met with, as going hand in hand with Trump's victory as a wakeup call.

Maybe all the liberals here who say moving left is terrible are correct. I don't know. But I do know that the Democrats have to do something that acknowledges that rage and tries to work with it or they'll be swept aside by the right wing populists.

Personally, as a leftist, I think left wing populism is a really damn great idea. But whether you agree with me there or not, you can't ignore the facts behind the rise of populism and win elections.

Right now it looks like the Democrats intend to keep putting their fingers in their ears and shouting "LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" when America says it's angry about wealth inequality, high prices, low wages, and shitty health insurance. They can't keep just saying "lulz ACA was great" and expect that to get them anywhere. Even if it's true it doesn't feel true and feelings don't care about your facts. Worse, feelings are what win elections. Notice how the Democrats kept trying over and over to tell people that their feelings were wrong, that the economy was doing super duper great, that you actually did have more money than you didn in 2020 and it didn't get anywhere?

Same applies here. Democrats might be factually correct when they say the ACA was good, but a) it's insufficient, and b) it doesn't feel good to anyone so it doesn't matter.

Liberals have to deal, somehow, with the forces that are giving rise to populism. I personally don't understand why liberals hate the idea of left wing populism so passionately, but OK. Given that technocratic wankery and telling people to stop feeling bad because facts doesn't work, what's the solution if not left wing populism?
posted by sotonohito at 7:18 AM on December 9, 2024 [28 favorites]

@mnateshyamalan.bsky.social‬:

If I were the NYPD I would try releasing some facts about the shooter that do not make him sound awesome.
posted by Wordshore at 7:54 AM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

Or possibly "facts".
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:29 AM on December 9, 2024

Further down the thread in Wordshore's link:

"If they were really interested in apprehending the guy, UnitedHealth would kick in a few million that they had set aside for stock buybacks and executive bonuses for the reward."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:36 AM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

I saw this latex face mask and wonder whether it could have been used by the killer. They are somewhat similar.

I think there might be something to this. I checked out some silicone realistic masks on Etsy. Something like that could cause the "dewy" appearance I see in the hostel photo.
posted by Miko at 8:45 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

"If they were really interested in apprehending the guy, UnitedHealth would kick in a few million that they had set aside for stock buybacks and executive bonuses for the reward."

well yeah, finding his killer isn't going to improve their stock price any, and shareholders would prefer the money.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:56 AM on December 9, 2024

NY Post: Person of interest nabbed in fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside NYC hotel

Forgive the link to the Post, I know it's not fit to wrap a fish in, but it is the first article I found about our hero being nabbed.
posted by SansPoint at 9:01 AM on December 9, 2024

Also, NYT: Investigators of C.E.O.’s Killing Are Questioning a Man in Pennsylvania
posted by Miko at 9:06 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

That Post headline mentions a "manifesto" but the story includes no such detail.
posted by Miko at 9:08 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

headline mentions a "manifesto" but the story includes no such detail.

"Yeah man, I fess to the crime."
posted by phunniemee at 9:13 AM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

Nothing about a manifesto yet in any of the flurry of NYT updates on details of his detention so far. Looks like this is definitely the guy (still holding the fake ID, gun with silencer, etc), turned in by an elderly customer of the McDonalds he stopped at. I wonder if anyone else had previously recognized him and chose not to call it in, even for $10,000?
posted by blue suede stockings at 9:28 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Slain Healthcare CEO’s Life Airbrushed by Media

Dude was a drunk driver. Was also separated from his wife for years (not wrong in any capacity, but he was not a loving husband, or at least hadn't been for some time). Also guilty of doing millions of dollars of insider trading!
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:29 AM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

Considering how well-planned this was, I assume the gofundme for bail will open up later today.
posted by mittens at 9:29 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

Now I've learned about the horrors of Altoona-style pizza. (As many have already joked, this is the real crime happening there)
posted by coffeecat at 9:37 AM on December 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

"trying to use a fake ID in a McDonald's"

Honestly I don't even understand what someone would use an ID for in McDonald's ever. (Maybe with a credit card when someone decides to be a stickler, but I sincerely hope this guy wasn't using a credit card?) This makes no sense. Lots of shoddy reporting of nonsensical police statements around whatever happened.
posted by limeonaire at 9:37 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

He's an obvious flight risk, he's not getting released on bail.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:37 AM on December 9, 2024

Legal defense fund then.
posted by coffeecat at 9:38 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

anyway today a different vigilante just got acquitted of homicide in NYC
posted by BungaDunga at 9:40 AM on December 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

Re: the fake ID, ABC says someone recognized him from the images the NYPD has been circulating and notified the police, and that he was “found with” the fake ID, not that he used it there.
posted by brook horse at 9:42 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

NYTimes is now reporting he had a manifesto on him. And similar to what brook horse said, I'm seeing reporting that an elderly patron of McDonalds tipped off authorities.
posted by coffeecat at 9:44 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Yeah, that makes more sense. The NYP writing is just bad, because it says what I quoted.
posted by limeonaire at 9:44 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Yeah, their live updates are frequently no better than a random person tweeting - I really wish they'd go a bit slower and wait to confirm details before spitting them out.
posted by coffeecat at 9:47 AM on December 9, 2024

anyway today a different vigilante just got acquitted of homicide in NYC

Yeah, that acquittal is tragic. There's an ocean of difference between the vigilante who makes an example of an executive who profited from the deaths and pain of many and the vigilante who strangles an unhoused youth on the train.
posted by limeonaire at 9:50 AM on December 9, 2024 [15 favorites]

someone recognized him from the images the NYPD has been circulating and notified the police

If this turns out to be the shooter, then I predict there will soon be a second (internet) manhunt for whoever snitched on him.
posted by obliterati at 9:51 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

NYTimes now reporting "The handwritten manifesto found on the person of the man detained in Altoona criticized health care companies for putting profits above care, according to a senior law enforcement official."
posted by coffeecat at 9:55 AM on December 9, 2024

IDGI. Why would you carry off this perfect assassination, requiring meticulous planning, actually get out of the city, and then keep wearing the clothes and carrying the weapon. I can only think he wanted to get caught.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:57 AM on December 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

Granted I am kind of face blind under the best of circumstances, but I really can’t imagine IDing a stranger in McDonald’s based on the pictures that have been released
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:58 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

Granted I am kind of face blind under the best of circumstances, but I really can’t imagine IDing a stranger in McDonald’s based on the pictures that have been released

To be fair, I'm sure elderly patrons in McDonalds all across the country were phoning in reports that the young stranger who just walked in looks like the shooter in the pictures. This one just happened to be lucky.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:02 AM on December 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

Why would you carry off this perfect assassination

if the cops are to be trusted they managed to get fingerprint and DNA evidence off the stuff he left behind, so "perfect" seems to be pushing it a bit
posted by BungaDunga at 10:03 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

NYTimes now reporting "The handwritten manifesto found on the person of the man detained in Altoona criticized health care companies for putting profits above care, according to a senior law enforcement official."

Welp. So much for the killing not being motivated by the shitshow that is health insurance.

Sucks to be the prosecutor who gets assigned to this case.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:08 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

I actually don't think it would be that hard to find a Manhattan jury that would convict him.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:14 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

To be fair, I'm sure elderly patrons in McDonalds all across the country were phoning in reports that the young stranger who just walked in looks like the shooter in the pictures. This one just happened to be lucky.

I mean, at this point the easiest way to get your manifest read by the entire internet would be to pretend to be this guy. Just make sure your lawyer is on retainer and has your water tight albi in hand already so you can walk out once you're done playing jailed revolutionary.
posted by pwnguin at 10:15 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

I disapprove of whoever snitched.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:15 AM on December 9, 2024 [23 favorites]

1. Do not publish the manifesto.

2. He had a good run.
posted by East14thTaco at 10:26 AM on December 9, 2024

I mean, if this is indeed a decoy shooter (I still have a hard time believing the photos we've been shown are not two different people) then it's possible this guy is guilty of aiding and abetting a murder, but the shooter is still out there.

I'm just glad they didn't shoot him, which means a trial (which will no doubt generate continued attention to our shitty healthcare system) will happen.
posted by coffeecat at 10:28 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

I mean, at this point the easiest way to get your manifest read by the entire internet would be to pretend to be this guy. Just make sure your lawyer is on retainer and has your water tight albi in hand already so you can walk out once you're done playing jailed revolutionary.

I'm really kind of hoping this is it, as unlikely as it seems. More likely this is the shooter and he wanted to be caught.

I disapprove of whoever snitched.

I do too....unless they really needed the reward money for medical bills...
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:30 AM on December 9, 2024

The shooter has a Twitter account, and although I can’t sign in and see it, the screenshots I have seen are pretty off-putting. He’s a “glorious Nippon,” Kacynzszki fan type. I know, who would’ve thought a premeditated murderer was such a creep? But I don’t think it will hurt his popularity too much.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:32 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

It's up to him really, if he chooses to plead then there won't be a full trial.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:32 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Welp. So much for the killing not being motivated by the shitshow that is health insurance.

according to him anyway

The shooter has a Twitter account, and although I can’t sign in and see it, the screenshots I have seen are pretty off-putting. He’s a “glorious Nippon,” Kacynzszki fan type.

of course he is. I was just talking to someone about how the unabomber still has a cult following, and I should have expected this fanbase after Instagram started showing me clips from some guy's unabomber musical
posted by BungaDunga at 10:34 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Seems like this might be his Twitter profile, before it's locked/scrapped.
posted by coffeecat at 10:35 AM on December 9, 2024

The handwritten manifesto found on the person of the man detained in Altoona criticized health care companies for putting profits above care

Good thing nobody else in America has ever written down such a criticism!
posted by mittens at 10:37 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

"A read through an X feed that appears to belong to the suspected shooter shows he was really interested in AI, and shared Elon Musk's views about combatting the "woke mind virus."" [BlueSky]
posted by BungaDunga at 10:38 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Seems like this might be his Twitter profile

On the one hand, rawr...on the other, he retweeted Tim Ferriss, so he should probably get the chair.
posted by mittens at 10:39 AM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

If this is true, this guy is a private school guy? Wild.

Tuition at his listed school is $37K a year.
posted by mochapickle at 10:39 AM on December 9, 2024

Hmm, from what I see on his Twitter feed is mostly computer nerd stuff, being anti-Elon Musk, a promotion of shrooms for mental health, interest in AI, etc. I admittedly don't know what "glorious Nippon" is.

Whoever you're following on Bluesky doesn't know how to read. He retweeted someone quote-tweeting Musk. Their quote-tweet read:

"Your commitment to long-term civilizational success, Elon, is not universally shared

It's not even the majority position

What you call the "woke mind virus" cares about one thing only: equality

The levelers want to destroy everything because in the rubble we will all be equal"

(Clearly not pro-Musk, at least)
posted by coffeecat at 10:40 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

not sure about his "ban flashlights" plan
posted by BungaDunga at 10:43 AM on December 9, 2024

The quote tweet reads to me like it’s agreeing with Elon. (Whether retweets are endorsements is a controversy too hot for me to wade in on.)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:43 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

This can't possibly be the guy, can it? Huberman fans are too busy researching their next overpriced supplement, they don't have time to write on bullets.
posted by mittens at 10:43 AM on December 9, 2024

fuck a dead ceo.

Not trying to kinkshame, but this is a hard pass for me.
posted by nickmark at 10:43 AM on December 9, 2024 [12 favorites]

Now I can't actually can't get into the Twitter and haven't seen the screenshots but he seems kind of....dumb? Like both too dumb to do this and to dumb to fake having done it. I guess not, apparently, but that's the vibe I get. That's kh judge vibe after seeing only one tweet (let me tell you what's wrong with Japan...).
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:44 AM on December 9, 2024

Scrolling more - some "manosphere light" stuff - but mostly just a misreading of "toxic masculinity" as meaning all masculinity is toxic. Not saying the guy is perfect by any means, but not seeing anything too egregious yet.
posted by coffeecat at 10:44 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

(wait, new theory--check out his pic with the screws in his sacrum--disgruntled surgery patient!)
posted by mittens at 10:46 AM on December 9, 2024

The quote tweet reads to me like it’s agreeing with Elon.

I mean this part: What you call the "woke mind virus" cares about one thing only: equality. The levelers want to destroy everything because in the rubble we will all be equal is clearly making fun of Elon's terminology of "woke mind virus" and saying contrary to what Elon thinks, the "woke" just want equality, which is good.
posted by coffeecat at 10:48 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

apparently gave 4/5 stars to the Unabomber manifesto
posted by BungaDunga at 10:48 AM on December 9, 2024

apparently gave 4/5 stars to the Unabomber manifesto

Everyone who ever posted here about The Omnivore's Dilemma is now a suspect.
posted by mittens at 10:50 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

the straightforward reading of that tweet is "the woke mind virus are people who profess to want to level society, but they really want to tear it down and have us all be equal in the ashes"
posted by BungaDunga at 10:51 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

On his Goodreads favorites he has both The Lorax AND a book about bullet journaling.
posted by mittens at 10:53 AM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

i suppose this just goes to show everybody hates health insurance companies/the best medical system in the world
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:54 AM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

i don't know any other way to read a tweet that begins "not everyone is committed to civilization", proceeds to "woke people are committed to equality" and ends with "they want us to be equal by destroying society." It's a yes-and.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:54 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Doesn't explain away the clear meaning of scare quotes. Nor the fact that Elon is calling his views "centrist" while the quote tweet is arguing with him, pointing out they are "not even the majority position."
posted by coffeecat at 10:55 AM on December 9, 2024

i don't know any other way to read a tweet that begins "not everyone is committed to civilization"

Cool, the tweet doesn't even start that way....
posted by coffeecat at 10:56 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

There's a whole array of people on Twitter trying to radicalize Elon further. "No Elon, you aren't centrist: you're actually a radical rightwing extremist like us..."
posted by BungaDunga at 10:56 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

the disagreement is over whether woke people are just misguided, or whether they're trying to tear down civilization from the roots. that's the nature of the disagreement with Musk. If there's a disagreement there it's from the right
posted by BungaDunga at 10:58 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

i mean elon doesn't need any help being on the radical right
posted by mittens at 10:59 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

he certainly doesn't but the insane Nazis on Twitter are constantly trying to get him to heil harder, to say the 14 words, to turn to the camera announce that his type of Naziism is exactly their brand of it (and of course there are lots of competing types)
posted by BungaDunga at 11:00 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

If this is really the guy, then his twitter just says to me that he's a dime-a-dozen weird young man who listens to Joe Rogan and Sam Harris and thinks he's smarter than he is. His politics are totally incoherent. Kudos to him for actually choosing a worthwhile target though, this kind of guy normally doesn't.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 11:00 AM on December 9, 2024 [21 favorites]

Ah Ok, digging into the replies to this Quote Tweet you're right - clearly I don't spend enough time listening to Elon fans, lol.
posted by coffeecat at 11:00 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

The author of the tweet talks nonstop about his love of Nietzsche, I promise he absolutely does believe that people who want equality want to get it by destroying the great.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 11:02 AM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

imagine, an italian kid with an interest in futuristic technology and right-wing sympathies
posted by mittens at 11:02 AM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

Also likes national parks and Michael Pollan. So yeah, I agree that perhaps best way of describing him is random young man with a range of views that aren't particularly coherent in any classic sense.
posted by coffeecat at 11:03 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Parallel construction never stopped, given the timeline includes a recent statement that they had a name and McDonald's is well-equipped for surveillance-state-monitoring, I wouldn't place too much weight on the official story of how this guy was located.

The only question to me is whether the analytics firm correlating your ad profile's movements with bluetooth/wifi tracking and facial recognition to their payment processing would bill the government agencies they contract with for the identification or make the tip themselves. Probably some form of "both" that makes the most profit.
posted by polyhedron at 11:04 AM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

His Goodreads page. His taste is certainly mixed!
posted by coffeecat at 11:06 AM on December 9, 2024

Lol, he liked this quote from Slaugherhouse V:

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
posted by coffeecat at 11:07 AM on December 9, 2024 [10 favorites]

a book about bullet journaling

Didn't read -- just took the title literally.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:07 AM on December 9, 2024 [12 favorites]

my description of "a random chud with a gun" upthread is vindicated
posted by BungaDunga at 11:08 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

When I used to teach I used to come across a lot of smart young people with wildly heterodox politics and beliefs who simply hadn’t figured out what they really believe yet

I’m not sure his twitter or reading list can tell us much of anything about him
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:09 AM on December 9, 2024 [21 favorites]

Also turns out to be the valedictorian of his high school. As a Baltimorean, I can say that this high school generally caters to the well-heeled WASPs of Baltimore. Not the usual alumni update!
posted by coffeecat at 11:10 AM on December 9, 2024 [10 favorites]

with his apparent media diet, that he didn't go after Fauci instead seems like pure chance
posted by BungaDunga at 11:11 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

While you can draw some lines between the bodybuilder/health optimization crowd or whatever they're called, and the anti-fauci plandemic crowd, it's definitely not a 1:1 correlation.
posted by mittens at 11:13 AM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

His Twitter header shows a spinal X-ray with some sort of hardware in it. Feel like that may be the most relevant piece of information.
posted by atoxyl at 11:13 AM on December 9, 2024 [12 favorites]

my description of "a random chud with a gun" upthread is vindicated

But does it really matter? We've all spent the past couple days imagining this guy to be who we wanted him to be, and isn't that a powerful message in and of itself? Health insurance in the US is shitty. UnitedHealthcare is a terrible company and it's CEO profited mightily from the deprivation of care.

Are we now supposed to apologize for our indulgences over the past couple days and pretend we don't live in a world where people of all politics cheered on the murder of a health insurance CEO because murderer turned out to be a more than a little deplorable?

with his apparent media diet, that he didn't go after Fauci instead seems like pure chance

So what?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:16 AM on December 9, 2024 [11 favorites]

repeated evidence of an interest in psychedelics, too, stretching a bit to speculate that he had some psychological break/breakthrough that motivated him to action, though - might just have been horrible medical experience!

(also perhaps I am a stickler but I think “chud” properly refers to a different type of guy than “generic IDW podcast listening tech bro” even if they are both right of center)
posted by atoxyl at 11:16 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

We've all spent the past couple days imagining this guy to be who we wanted him to be

Confession: I didn't imagine he'd turn out to be quite that cute.
posted by mittens at 11:17 AM on December 9, 2024 [14 favorites]

Also on his Goodreads (under already read) is "Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery"
posted by coffeecat at 11:19 AM on December 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

An assassin who turns out to be a lucky but stupid young man with no coherent ideology? what a surprise!

(it's all of them. When was the last time someone shot at a US president with a coherent ideology?)
posted by BungaDunga at 11:20 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

(but nobody has a coherent ideology!)
posted by mittens at 11:21 AM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

If I may be cynical, this is now a twofer: We get to have the whole discussion about how healthcare is so shitty it drove someone to murder a CEO in the street while still being able to be "civil" and denounce the Elon/Manosphere for radicalizing a young man to commit violence.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:23 AM on December 9, 2024 [10 favorites]

We've all spent the past couple days imagining this guy to be who we wanted him to be, and isn't that a powerful message in and of itself

"the fact that I could believe it tells you something about the current state of affairs"
posted by BungaDunga at 11:24 AM on December 9, 2024

Gene Weingarten called it on his Substack that the guy would turn out to be a bad egg.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:25 AM on December 9, 2024

yes it does indeed say something very bad about the state of America that we have higher trust in random chuds with guns than anyone else
posted by BungaDunga at 11:26 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

with his apparent media diet, that he didn't go after Fauci instead seems like pure chance

That's not particularly obvious? Maybe folks should dial down the qanon stuff until we actually know more.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:29 AM on December 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

Is anyone here in this thread surprised? I would have been surprised if he was just mad because the CEO had better muscle tone, but pretty much all I was expecting is he didn't like the American healthcare system for some personal reason and is potentially critical of capitalism (Monopoly money). And at least the first part seems to check out, second still possible given that he seems into the slow food movement - or maybe he just thought it would be funny. Unclear. In any case, his identity doesn't much change how I think about the act itself (still ethically OK with).
posted by coffeecat at 11:29 AM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

(to think for another second about the elon connection here...his net worth is over 8000x greater than brian thompson's, he's an entirely separate phylum. it's like class as 17th-century demonology with its ranks and multitudes.)
posted by mittens at 11:30 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

We've all spent the past couple days imagining this guy to be who we wanted him to be

I don't know about you, but I imagined him as a guy with a gun who was unhappy with the healthcare insurance racket
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:31 AM on December 9, 2024 [35 favorites]

"the fact that I could believe it tells you something about the current state of affairs"

That comic was published in 2017. That world no longer exists.

yes it does indeed say something very bad about the state of America that we have higher trust in random chuds with guns than anyone else

Yeah. Health insurance is that bad, it's been a full ten years since there's been any changes made to it, and the outlook for any future progress is pretty grim.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:31 AM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

margaret killjoy: we spent the past week being like "wow class consciousness can unite right and left" so we probably shouldn't be surprised when the man who helped so many people find class consciousness is a sort of center-right philosophy bro.
posted by mittens at 11:32 AM on December 9, 2024 [10 favorites]

I absolutely believe the reason we've seen Musk with his youngest child a lot recently is because of this incident. Which says even more horrible things about him.

"You wouldn't shoot a man holding his son, now would you?" is the vibe I get.
posted by Kitteh at 11:32 AM on December 9, 2024 [14 favorites]

When was the last time someone shot at a US president with a coherent ideology?)

Have any of your presidents had a coherent ideology?
posted by biffa at 11:33 AM on December 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

yes it does indeed say something very bad about the state of America that we have higher trust in random chuds with guns than anyone else


For 20 years now we've been told to accept the existence of random chuds with guns as intractable.

And well, if they're not shooting up schools anymore...
posted by ocschwar at 11:33 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

denounce the Elon/Manosphere for radicalizing a young man to commit violence

Fairly sure this is a joke but as much as his (publicly visible) politics and interests are not the sort most people here are fond of, they’re really not of the “kill a CEO” radical sort. Like, at all, beyond “that type of guy might have some weird ideas about health.” So I do think that best guess is it’s personal.

There’s supposedly a manifesto so we’ll probably know but whatever, I don’t mind indulging in speculation a bit.
posted by atoxyl at 11:36 AM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

Also, does anyone know what Pokemon he has on his banner pic? Is it some sort of right-wing Pokemon? I'm not really familiar with the politics of the individual monsters.
posted by mittens at 11:37 AM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

And well, if they're not shooting up schools anymore...

we're facing down at least four years of officially government-sanctioned right-wing vigilante violence, I wouldn't count your chickens
posted by BungaDunga at 11:37 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Yeah, if anything is a bit surprising it's how much of a normie he seems (at least so far). I've taught hundreds of young men like him in my college classrooms.
posted by coffeecat at 11:39 AM on December 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

I am not usually on the "normalization", "stochastic terrorism" train, but if anything is going to normalize terrorist violence it's going to be lionizing a guy like this (and Trump's upcoming Jan6th pardons).

would-be fauci murderers are not going to parse this too finely.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:40 AM on December 9, 2024

Is it some sort of right-wing Pokemon?

Maybe just a mushroom thing?
posted by atoxyl at 11:42 AM on December 9, 2024

Well, his jury can have two choices: convict him, while right wing chums looking at more favored targets still get a free hand in the next 4 years.

Or deadlock, sending a message that this chaos will be all or none.
posted by ocschwar at 11:44 AM on December 9, 2024

the pokemon in question
posted by mittens at 11:46 AM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

CEOs, as a class, will do just fine in a Purge scenario.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:47 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: I'm not really familiar with the politics of the individual monsters.
posted by atbash at 11:52 AM on December 9, 2024 [10 favorites]

Famously the point of the movies even.
posted by stet at 11:52 AM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

The alleged shooter's politics may read as incoherent to the ultra-online, who are used to granularizing people's ideologies down to the millionth hyphenate, but based on a dive into his Goodreads and Twitter pages, he is practically indistinguishable from most 20s & 30s men I know.

Health and physical fitness: check.
A focus on nutrition and personal betterment: check.
A weird anxiety about Japan's immigration policies: check.
Respect for the Unabomber: check.
Disgust with phones, social media, porn, mass media: check.

He would almost certainly not describe himself as "right wing" and to the extent that he even acknowledges a right and left distinction, would do so by criticizing each side's perceived excesses in the realm of the culture war. The type of guy who probably says he's apolitical. This is, for better or for worse, most young men in North America. His follows on Twitter include both AOC and RFK Jr.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 11:56 AM on December 9, 2024 [35 favorites]

I absolutely believe the reason we've seen Musk with his youngest child a lot recently is because of this incident. Which says even more horrible things about him.

Nah, X is currently his emotional support child and it's not uncommon to see Elon with him, or him crawling all over Elon like a monkey while Elon steams playing video games and the like, and that's been going on for a while now.
posted by foxfirefey at 11:59 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

some random young "apolitical" guy with a gun is practically a mascot for America. the prototypical median voter.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:00 PM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

Hence his ability to unite the country.

Anyway, saw someone point out elsewhere that his age - 26 - is when you get kicked off your parents' heath insurance. Coincidence? I guess we'll eventually find out.
posted by coffeecat at 12:05 PM on December 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

I think we need a new thread...
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:07 PM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

Gene Weingarten called it on his Substack that the guy would turn out to be a bad egg.

Yo, again, jenfullmoon, you're cool, but I really don't see evidence here that the alleged shooter is a particularly "bad egg" either from his social-media presence thus far. This feels like pure speculation at this point.

I think Cpt. The Mango is spot-on. Feels like a very normal set of views and reading material for a guy his age. But I sure do see a lot of people who want to believe he's some kind of symptom of right-wing whatever, whereas he looks really super middle-of-the-road to me.
posted by limeonaire at 12:07 PM on December 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

CNN reporting he had a note on him that read: "These parasites had it coming ... I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done"
posted by coffeecat at 12:11 PM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

Oh he likes Joe Rogan? Then he’s definitely a right wing asshole. Probably hasn’t read my dissertation on toxic masculinity on Spotify podcasts. /s
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:12 PM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

Somebody set his Goodreads to private

Would not be surprised if they hush up his “manifesto” as well
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:14 PM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

I do apologize for any strife and trauma

the terrorism equivalent of "no copyright infringement intended"
posted by mittens at 12:14 PM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

well yeah, the median American is vaguely conservative.

Posts on Mangione's social media accounts suggest that he had fallen out of touch with family and friends. In a post tagging Mangione on X, someone wrote: "Hey, are you ok? Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you."
posted by BungaDunga at 12:15 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

BREAKING; LUIGI MANGIONE BI CONFIRMED
posted by mittens at 12:16 PM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

Would not be surprised if they hush up his “manifesto” as well

it's up to him, he has a right to trial, and a right to testify at his trial. So he'll be able to get his views out there in some form if he really wants to.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:16 PM on December 9, 2024

Baltimore Sun now reporting: The man arrested in connection to the murder of a health insurance executive is related to Republican Maryland House of Delegates member Nino Mangione. Specifically, they are cousins.

Baltimore Banner:

Mangione comes from a prominent Baltimore family.

Luigi Mangione, 26, is from a large family that has connections that touch area business, politics, media and civic life.

His grandfather, Nick Mangione Sr., who died in 2008, was a self-made real estate developer who owned country clubs, nursing homes and a radio station. Nick Sr. died in 2018. And Mangione's grandmother Mary, who died in 2023 from Parkinson’s, was described in an obituary as a hospital benefactor and a music patron.

They purchased Turf Valley Country Club in 1978, establishing it as a golf course resort and residential community, and later Hayfields Country Club in 1986.

Family businesses also include the Lorien nursing homes and radio station WCBM-AM. Mary Mangione was a supporter of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, the old Baltimore Opera Company and the Walters Art Museum, eventually becoming a Walters trustee.

Del. Nino Mangione, a Baltimore County Republican, is a cousin, his office confirmed to WBAL.
posted by coffeecat at 12:29 PM on December 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

I laughed when I read "bi confirmed," haha. One of my cats came over and gave me a concerned look.

Like to me, it's a feature, not a bug, that both of the people involved in this (alleged shooter and CEO) are such middling examples of their type. Alleged shooter is smart (but maybe not smart enough to disappear), open-minded (maybe to a fault), and looking for answers (and perhaps found some in less-than-ideal places on the internet, like a lot of young guys these days). Personal medical trauma and/or familial exposure to the health-care system may have played a role. Not really that surprising! The fact that he came from privilege, well, Batman vibes. That's not gonna make him less of a folk hero.

Ken Klippenstein (linked above) does a great job of outlining the issues the CEO had. He too was a bit of a middling exemplar of his type—not the most ambitious or villainous CEO, but certainly a bit villainous, had some personal problems, possibly was only still married for health insurance reasons and/or to save face professionally.

Like above all, this is a very American story. This is the American health-care system at work, pitting us all against each other, choose your fighter.
posted by limeonaire at 12:38 PM on December 9, 2024 [28 favorites]

It's his fault he got caught. Not only did he still have the gun on him, but he went into a McDonald's when there was a Popeye's across the street.

Nobody in a Popeye's would snitch.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:45 PM on December 9, 2024 [48 favorites]

Like to me, it's a feature, not a bug, that both of the people involved in this (alleged shooter and CEO) are such middling examples of their type.

He also used a 3D-printed ghost gun.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:50 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Right, that's a little bit above average, heh—which the alleged shooter clearly is! Just bad opsec. Disaffected, empathetic smart kid radicalized by stuff he read plus personal experience, though? That describes like an entire class of people, especially in this country, especially after the last 5 years or so.
posted by limeonaire at 12:56 PM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

"seems like the shooter had some sort of mental breakdown about 6 months ago and totally vanished" (elsewhere apparently his last known address was in Hawaii)
posted by BungaDunga at 1:00 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

But is he related to Chuck?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 1:03 PM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

gonna turn out it really was those dang mushrooms
posted by atoxyl at 1:11 PM on December 9, 2024

Chuck and the shooter had a falling out when Chuck endorsed the mega-lo-mart.
posted by stet at 1:11 PM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

What the CEO shooting suspect's social media pages tell us about him (Mediaite)
The murky right-wing politics of the alleged UHC shooter (The New Republic)
posted by box at 1:31 PM on December 9, 2024

Luigi Mangione, 26, is from a large family that has connections that touch area business, politics, media and civic life.

Echoing what some other people have been saying, I’d bet that he won’t turn out to be especially political but more of along the lines of a relatively privileged kid who grew up hearing that “best healthcare system in the world” rhetoric and believed it right up until he got chewed up by it. High school valedictorian and athlete, multiple degrees from a good school, professionally moving into AI - that really sounds like someone who (not without reason) expects the system to work for them. Some fraction of the people who find out otherwise are going to get angry, and in a country where guns are easier to get than healthcare some fraction of them are going to think about revenge. What I’m really curious about is whether this will lead to copycats.
posted by adamsc at 1:32 PM on December 9, 2024 [18 favorites]

Surprised we haven't heard anything yet about his specific relationship with the medical world.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:35 PM on December 9, 2024

I do wonder if the media will ever do as deep a dive into Brian Thompson's reading materials, media and drug consumption, political donations, etc. which over the decades all lead him to run a company with a philosophy that was okay with letting people die to maintain a certain profit margin. Perhaps CEOs are just gifted a different level of privacy, despite the consequences of their actions.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:36 PM on December 9, 2024 [46 favorites]

Surprised we haven't heard anything yet about his specific relationship with the medical world.

HIPAA is still a thing.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:36 PM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

The murky right-wing politics of the alleged UHC shooter

I've been thinking about limeonaire's comment above, and I really think it's a mistake for left-leaning publications (and, honestly, Democrats in general) to try to shove this guy away and make him out to be a big (or a murky) right-winger. Like, let's not diagnose him, let's instead diagnose the problem that brought him to this point, and use this public anger he represents to call for change in healthcare.

He's not an alien, he's extremely understandable, and it would make more sense to use that as your political tool, rather than contentedly pointing out that he's not one of yours.

Someone--I've already forgotten who, it has been a busy day--used the term "hegemonic defeatism" today, and I think the complete inability of the Democrats to harness this guy and this moment to make a point about insurance, is a great illustration of the problem (and why there will be even more disgruntled guys to come).
posted by mittens at 1:39 PM on December 9, 2024 [32 favorites]

Surprised we haven't heard anything yet about his specific relationship with the medical world.

HIPAA is still a thing.

Uhhhh yes I know! Was talking about what anyone can know, the online presence of one's life, particularly from a writer like him, to have details about his life as it intersects with medicine. Thanks!
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:41 PM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

V. Spehar is reporting that the accused shooter's family has operated senior care facilities in Maryland -- Lorian Health. These facilities are often family owned, and UHC has been snapping them up, so many at this point that the state is pushing back against UHC creating a monopoly, and with the monopoly, they are driving prices down so the remaining family-owned facilities cannot compete.

So that's one potential angle, perhaps.
posted by mochapickle at 1:50 PM on December 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

@chlowski.bsky.social‬:
me *logging on*: what's all this, is there a new Luigi game?
me 5 seconds later: oh.

@philatticus.bsky.social‬:
Luigi continues to have the most interesting lore of the Super Mario universe.

@thefienprint.bsky.social:
Luigi Mangione and Altoona McDonalds are the names of main characters in a Eudora Welty short story and nothing you can say is going to convince me otherwise.
posted by Wordshore at 1:55 PM on December 9, 2024 [24 favorites]

The funniest thing my kid just sent me: “We should have known the shooter wasn’t a leftist when he shot a healthcare CEO instead of a leftist sect rival”
posted by corb at 2:03 PM on December 9, 2024 [38 favorites]

the complete inability of the Democrats to harness this guy and this moment to make a point about insurance,

You say inability, I say unwillingness, but yeah
posted by knobknosher at 2:16 PM on December 9, 2024 [11 favorites]

Yo, again, jenfullmoon, you're cool, but I really don't see evidence here that the alleged shooter is a particularly "bad egg" either from his social-media presence thus far. This feels like pure speculation at this point.

I annoyingly don't have access to the newsletter where I am now, but "bad egg" was just a very simplistic summary. Basically Gene was all "people may find this guy hot now, but here's a list of other assassin/bomber people who weren't good people." And this was before the arrest, but he was saying that we'll probably find out this guy isn't a hero fighting back against the insurance agencies of the world. Not that I'm gonna check the dude's X account, but from what people were posting, it sounded like it was leaning towards ruh-roh territory.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:22 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

(Weingarten's Substack, which seems like a pretty simplistic summary in its own right, but YMMV.)
posted by box at 2:32 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

He’s a hero fighting back against insurance companies regardless of whatever thought crimes will be found to deter to distract us from the literally millions of people being immiserated by health insurance companies as we speak

Just a massive tu quoque fallacy rammed down our throats every time anyone does something to threaten the status quo
posted by knobknosher at 2:33 PM on December 9, 2024 [29 favorites]

👆 for real.

The article I read earlier from CNN was fascinating, the whole vibe, with multiple "expert" quotes was all, "don't worry, John Q Public, we will catch him." Which at the time I thought was funny bravado but now that I reflect, understand it to be a threat towards all of us that we'd better not be copycats, eyes on your own life problems kids
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:43 PM on December 9, 2024 [14 favorites]

Just a massive tu quoque fallacy

Yes but imagine if you were tied to some trolley tracks and the runaway trolley was bearing down on you--however, the person who could pull the lever and save you, once tweeted about crypto.
posted by mittens at 2:46 PM on December 9, 2024 [36 favorites]

Was talking about what anyone can know, the online presence of one's life, particularly from a writer like him, to have details about his life as it intersects with medicine.

So far we just know that he's been concerned with back pain since at least 2022 (surfing accident in Hawaii), and he had a recent back surgery and since then friends and family report he became hard to reach.
posted by coffeecat at 2:56 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Thanks haven't seen anyone reporting that yet
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:58 PM on December 9, 2024

I'm still a bit skeptical about the photos - the fact that he's potentially still suffering from back pain makes his quick escape all the stranger. The photo in Starbucks (masked) and the photo from the hostel where he is unmasked but not smiling, resembles the shooter we see in video. It really does not look like this guy. This guy is clearly involved, but at this point I wouldn't be surprised if he is supposed to be caught and there is a second guy out there.
posted by coffeecat at 3:08 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

It would be hilarious if he were just in town for the lookalike contest and had a *different* manifesto on him.
posted by corb at 3:16 PM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

This cultural analysis sounds about right:

I immediately recognize the cultural-political affiliation of the CEO assassin but don't have a name for it -- sort of the the non-right-wing side of 4chan, discord, NEET radicalism

The political subculture of the least leftist people in noise music, the most leftist people in Dimes Square, the nerdiest people in rave culture, and the least nerdy people in TPOT

'Bleeding Heart 4chan'?

That's pretty good
> @thanksmach: Center right alt-turbonormie

Just tbc I knew he's a succesful engineer with Ivy undergrad when I posted OP. NEET radicalism and successful engineer radicalism are the same culture

I think it sounds about right, he likely subscribes to a grab bag of ideas rather than any coherent program. Which is why he might be into following RFK Jr. on Twitter and psychedelics (and, say, hating on seed oils) but not be full-blown into anti-Fauci plandemic conspiracy theories or anti-vaxx activism like people have been quick to lump him into.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:17 PM on December 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

My two favorite jokes so far:

1. Beloved murderer canceled after old tweets surface

2. was a big fan of his work as an assassin, had no idea he was retweeting peter thiel and jonathan haidt. unfollowing now

So I dunno, perhaps some on the left are, like mittens suggests above, showing willingness to use his story as a "political tool, rather than contentedly pointing out that he's not one of yours."
posted by coffeecat at 3:25 PM on December 9, 2024 [17 favorites]

hatred of CEOs contains multitudes
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:25 PM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

Also I'm sure there's a substantial overlap in audiences but he seems less of a Joe Rogan guy and more of a Lex Friedman guy. Almost "culturally crypto" without necessarily even being into crypto, if that makes sense.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:29 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

The Daniel Penney verdict has made it click for me as to one reason why I’ve been cynical about this, I don’t think people would be talking about how relatable and cute the (alleged) shooter is if he were black, and/or an immigrant.
posted by girlmightlive at 3:33 PM on December 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

On his Goodreads favorites he has both The Lorax AND a book about bullet journaling.

Ah so that's why he apparently wrote key terms from his grievance on his shell casings. Either he didn't read the latter, or he was very confused about how the concept works.
posted by jackbishop at 3:34 PM on December 9, 2024 [18 favorites]

I don’t think people would be talking about how relatable and cute the (alleged) shooter is if he were black, and/or an immigrant.

Remember Christopher Dorner?
posted by Apocryphon at 3:38 PM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

I don’t think people would be talking about how relatable and cute the (alleged) shooter is if he were black, and/or an immigrant

Only one way to find out!
posted by mittens at 3:43 PM on December 9, 2024 [7 favorites]

. Which is why he might be into following RFK Jr. on Twitter and psychedelics (and, say, hating on seed oils) but not be full-blown into anti-Fauci plandemic conspiracy theories or anti-vaxx activism like people have been quick to lump him into.


Some of us follow Brainworms Esq because we loathe him.
posted by ocschwar at 3:49 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

I literally just googled "list of people who have committed political violence in the united states" so that I could make a EOCILF joke (extremists of color i'd like to fuck) but help everyone listed so far is white
posted by phunniemee at 3:50 PM on December 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

Almost "culturally crypto" without necessarily even being into crypto, if that makes sense.

I know he had some disparaging comments about NFTs. Not really unheard of among the tech-accelerationist crowd these days, though, since they’re an easy symbol of “tech” as quick cash-in to people who love tech but want to see it do big things.
posted by atoxyl at 3:56 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Shepherd, after I showed him Wossface: "OH WOW. Yeah, that is a good looking dude."
posted by Kitteh at 4:01 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

the long history of good-looking white murderers getting fanatical followings makes me deeply cynical that there is any good to be found in this guy's fandom

I liked Kelsey Atherton's thread today about American political violence.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:09 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

the long history of good-looking white murderers getting fanatical followings makes me deeply cynical that there is any good to be found in this guy's fandom

But you’ve been so positive about it thus far! Say it ain’t so
posted by knobknosher at 4:10 PM on December 9, 2024 [10 favorites]

if you are drawn to the guy because he's good looking and you think he hurt the right person, sorry, but I think you're a bit of a mark.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:11 PM on December 9, 2024

hey man I liked his work before he was hot
posted by phunniemee at 4:18 PM on December 9, 2024 [35 favorites]

Well, here's his mistake (from the NYTimes feed):

"When Altoona police officers responded to a tip from a local McDonald’s, they found Luigi Mangione sitting at a table with a laptop and wearing a blue medical mask"

You don't wear a medical mask in small town America if you're trying to blend in!
posted by coffeecat at 4:27 PM on December 9, 2024 [26 favorites]

I hate that that's true.
posted by limeonaire at 4:36 PM on December 9, 2024 [8 favorites]

a lot of stuff going around about how they think they must have got the wrong guy because they guy they imagine did it was a smooth operator and only an idiot would get caught in a mcdonald's

no, he's just a guy. he got a bit lucky, the NYPD was a normal level of incompetent, and then today he got a normal amount of unlucky and someone spotted him. that's what happened.

he's not a supervillain, he's just some guy.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:38 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Well, I was wrong about him being a pro! He just thought everything through meticulously right up until the point where he was out of NYC, at which point he appears to have stopped thinking.

Anybody still rooting for the guy should probably watch Taxi Driver and reevaluate their fandom.
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:42 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

then today he got a normal amount of unlucky

I'm not saying the McDonald's arrest itself was part of some master plan to heighten the contradictions, but the fact that he was carrying the manifesto and had not yet gotten rid of his ghost gun, suggests that he knew it was just a matter of time, and was not making extraordinary efforts to remain free.
posted by mittens at 4:44 PM on December 9, 2024 [14 favorites]

No one watches Taxi Driver anymore ever since they remade it with Joker.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:47 PM on December 9, 2024

I can't believe I'm watching folks fair-weather-fan a literal assassin. Yall a bunch of dorks lol.
posted by phunniemee at 4:50 PM on December 9, 2024 [17 favorites]

he's not a supervillain, he's just some guy.

sometimes superheroes are just some guy too
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:51 PM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

No one watches Taxi Driver anymore ever since they remade it with Joker.

And that's a problem, because The Joker is an anti-hero celebrity superhero, while Travis Bickle was just a nutjob incel who happened to shoot the bad guys.
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:52 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

I can't believe I'm watching folks fair-weather-fan a literal assassin

Just another sports game for social and mainstream media to entertain and distract us with, while the elites get better security to handle this the next time it happens.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:54 PM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

Are you not entertained?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:54 PM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

From this AP story, it seems they were able to determine that the CEO shooter got to the bus terminal at around 7:30am on Dec. 4, around 45 minutes after the shooting. It's now 5 days later and they found Luigi Mangione in Altoona, PA. If he's actually the guy, I wonder why he didn't get farther away than Altoona? Like, he could easily have gotten to Montreal by dinnertime that day on a Greyhound. According to this CNN liveblog entry, the governor of PA says Mangione "traveled between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, making stops in between, including in in Altoona where he was arrested Monday". This makes it sound like he was criss-crossing back and forth across the state (i.e.: they didn't say he was in Altoona on his way to Pittsburgh, they said he had already traveled between Philly and Pittsburgh). What the heck was he doing traveling all over the place like that?

Anyways, from what I understand, if you're the subject of a massive manhunt like this, your best bet isn't to be moving around a lot but rather going to ground. Find a hiding spot and hide there until the heat dies down. Don't go out in public where you can be seen, especially when your face is on CNN. With AirBnBs and Doordash, I suspect you might be able to hide for a while like this without having your own fallout shelter-style setup and/or co-conspirators who can help hide you, at least until they get your name. But in this case, they didn't have this guy's name at all until they found him in Altoona.
posted by mhum at 4:59 PM on December 9, 2024 [6 favorites]

And that's a problem, because The Joker is an anti-hero celebrity superhero, while Travis Bickle was just a nutjob incel who happened to shoot the bad guys.

Isn’t that why they tried to undo it all with the sequel?
posted by Apocryphon at 5:05 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

The first shooter with a Goodreads sure has opinions, calls Matt Yglesias out for heaping “nationalistic crap.”
posted by Apocryphon at 5:06 PM on December 9, 2024 [11 favorites]

Wow we found the one of 3000 people who read Yglesias book. No one beats the Yglesias ratio (number of social media followers to book sales)
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:12 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Remember Christopher Dorner?

Of course I do, half the vets I know post his picture in memoriam, every veterans day. One of the few good cops.

"list of people who have committed political violence in the united states" so that I could make a EOCILF joke (extremists of color i'd like to fuck) but help everyone listed so far is white

The actual answer is that when extremists of color activate they generally kill cops and so the media doesn't post their most gorgeous photos, or indeed, any photos at all, especially because police usually kill them rather than take them alive. This NYT article for example posted photos of the cops, but not the shooter. You've got to really dig to find ultimately grainy yet attractive photos of Micah Xavier Johnson, black Army vet who took out five cops.

Speaking of Micah Johnson, it's worth noting that only the white police said he was a crazy person who wanted to kill white people at large. The one black policeman who he accepted as a negotiator said he was entirely sane, and that he expressed no animus towards him other than suggesting that he turn his weapon on the white police behind him - Johnson wanted to kill white cops in retaliation for their shooting of black men. He killed 5 white cops, wounded 9 white cops, and hit only 2 civilians who were likely collateral damage.

He was killed by robot by the police after a several hour standoff, honestly likely because they got bored of waiting him out.
posted by corb at 5:21 PM on December 9, 2024 [9 favorites]

Anyone examined the angle of what kind of healthcare you get in state/federal prison?
posted by brook horse at 5:24 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Isn’t that why they tried to undo it all with the sequel?

They made a sequel to Taxi Driver?
posted by stet at 5:27 PM on December 9, 2024

Yeah, it’s called First Reformed
posted by Apocryphon at 5:30 PM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

Huh. Why have I not seen that? Going off the wikipedia summary that looks great. Thanks!
posted by stet at 5:35 PM on December 9, 2024

I mean, bad news for america but that is what it is.
posted by stet at 5:36 PM on December 9, 2024

What might be Luigi's manifesto.
posted by Slothrup at 6:49 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Seems doubtful, since whoever wrote that lived a four hour drive from Monterey, CA. Or at least their mom did.
posted by nobody at 6:54 PM on December 9, 2024

Seems possible they went on a trip there, though. Where did you get that, Slothrup?
posted by limeonaire at 6:59 PM on December 9, 2024

So, the actual serious gun-related violence in the USA against right-wing politicians and their CEO buddies is coming from [checks notes] the right wing.

If that does not spur the right into serious gun control, nothing will.

[Narrator: It didn't.]
posted by Pouteria at 7:07 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Someone had linked to it on Twitter and it sounded plausible. On reflection, the Monterey reference does seem sketchy.
posted by Slothrup at 7:10 PM on December 9, 2024

Also, wasn't it establlished he comes from a wealthy family? I mean I guess it's possible that his grandparents or cousins or whatever are rich and his mother is not, but this doesn't sound like the story of a kid whose parents were paying $37K/year for private school.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:13 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

If that is Luigi Mangione's real manifesto, I hope it gets out and spreads far and wide because whatever way you feel about his choice of action (and my view on this is quite clear from my earlier comments), he makes some damn good points.
posted by SansPoint at 7:14 PM on December 9, 2024

On the other hand, NYTimes reports that he was a counselor at a Stanford summer program in 2019 (a 1.5hr drive from Monterey), so who knows. And if you were trying to pass off your own story as his, why would you keep the Monterey Aquarium detail in there, and the specifically 4 hour drive? (But it still seems best to be skeptical until further info comes in.)
posted by nobody at 7:22 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Yeah, that manifesto seems pretty fake - and considering how many people were already writing fan fiction for this guy before he was caught...it doesn't quite pass the sniff test. It also doesn't contain the quote from the manifesto that has been published in the press.

His mom seems to be doing well running a boutique travel agency - doesn't quite match the image of a bedridden mother.
posted by coffeecat at 7:27 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Anyone examined the angle of what kind of healthcare you get in state/federal prison?

Mostly you die screaming on the floor from a ruptured appendix because they don't want you to actually get any healthcare in prison and will do the minimum they possibly can for you in any given circumstance.
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:43 PM on December 9, 2024 [7 favorites]

(Whoever it was who was arguing for the possible morality of torture, above -- congratulations! American prisons are 100% torture!)
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:58 PM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

Why did his family not identify him?
posted by Pouteria at 8:04 PM on December 9, 2024

So according to the New York Times, he may have been an incel...no, not that kind...

Still, Mr. Martin said, he and others in the community came to understand that the pain was no small matter to a young man yearning for a normal lifestyle. “He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible,” Mr. Martin said. “I remember him telling me that, and my heart just breaks.”
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:05 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

Why did his family not identify him?

I mean, he looks like thousands of other Americans with Mediterranean (or Middle Eastern) roots - and the only good photos are only of his eyes. I wouldn't blame the family.

Anyway, NYTimes is also reporting he's now been charged with 2nd degree murder, which while IANL, seems odd? I mean, it was clearly premeditated. Can any lawyer-Mefites explain?
posted by coffeecat at 8:12 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Also from the NYTimes feed:

The 262-word handwritten manifesto that the police found on Luigi Mangione begins with the writer appearing to take responsibility for the murder, according to a senior law enforcement official who saw the document. It notes that as UnitedHealthcare’s market capitalization has grown, American life expectancy has not. “To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone,” he wrote. The note condemns companies that “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.” [emphasis added]

I dunno, seems like something a decoy would say unprompted.
posted by coffeecat at 8:33 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Decoy feels too complicated. But I am also someone who's made up their mind that he did want to be arrested to go to trial.

We are finally on the verge of learning, once and for all, if Italians are white
posted by cendawanita at 8:35 PM on December 9, 2024 [16 favorites]

Yeah, I mean, if the accused really turns out to be the shooter, and chronic pain and an inability to experience intimacy turn out to be part of what drove him to this, well, let's say I'm highly sympathetic. I know multiple people who have gone through that kind of hell, and I think most of them have considered resorting to extreme measures. Severe chronic pain changes a person. It can make regular life unlivable, make jobs untenable, and completely change one's cost-benefit analysis.

The way the health-care system in the U.S. seeks to criminalize that (turning doctors and nurses against people in pain, turning the people who should be helping into narcs who label people drug-seeking, and pathologizing medical providers who nonetheless try to help) is in itself criminal. A lot of the interventions that are supposed to help (especially for things like back pain) are relatively untested, slipstreamed through federal clearance. A lot of medical devices cause more harm than help. I also know medical providers who have gone through their own kind of hell trying to help people with conditions like this, as well as multiple people who have done battle to try to improve federal processes and lost as well. The deck is stacked, top to bottom.

I really have trouble looking away from this case, because I have so much empathy for how someone could get to that point, and I know multiple lives that have been ruined while trying to fight these forces at every level. Story of (a whole epoch of) my life, and others' lives around me. I just really hope this leads to some kind of change.
posted by limeonaire at 9:03 PM on December 9, 2024 [19 favorites]

Days like this on twitter feel like a bird got into the classroom
posted by limeonaire at 9:16 PM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

Mod note: One removed, please don't turn the conversation into commentary on another member, just flag or contact us if there is a problem. That said, I will also ask that people not flood the thread with repetitive comments, and/or constant back to back comments, which makes it seem like you are dominating the discussion. Try to combine some observations, and don't continue to repost what you've already said. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 9:20 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

I agree it seems he wanted to get caught and a decoy is far-fetched, I'm just having a hard time squaring those photos (Starbucks and the one non-smiling hostel photo) as being him - but certainly lighting/angles can be deceiving!

Anyway, Baltimore Banner reported an hour ago the below:

Just weeks before the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, suspect Luigi Mangione was reported missing to authorities in San Francisco by his mother, according to the San Francisco Standard.

Mangione’s mother, Kathleen Mangione, made the report to the San Francisco Police Department on Nov. 18, a police source with knowledge of the case told the Standard.

Mangione’s connection to San Francisco remains unknown, but public records suggest he may have relatives in the city, according to The Standard.

posted by coffeecat at 9:32 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Mod note: [In addition to mephron's comment on the sidebar and Best Of blog earlier, we've also added adrienneleigh's comment linking ProPublica’s Claim File Helper.]
posted by taz (staff) at 10:56 PM on December 9, 2024 [12 favorites]

I mean, he looks like thousands of other Americans with Mediterranean (or Middle Eastern) roots - and the only good photos are only of his eyes. I wouldn't blame the family.


The pics really did look like Sasha Baron Cohen. Did anyone narc on him?
posted by ocschwar at 11:13 PM on December 9, 2024

Was the gunshot wound considered a pre-existing condition?

Something which I find a little odd is how I've heard this joke a bunch of ways, but no one seems to acknowledge that pre-existing conditions aren't allowed as a reason for denial since 2014, as a result of the ACA.

It seems to me that if you want to make progress, you have to acknowledge the progress that has been made, so that you can learn from it and build on it. There's not much of that, here or elsewhere -- just rage and despair, and I don't see it leading to any positive change, either on this topic or others.
posted by alexei at 11:47 PM on December 9, 2024 [7 favorites]

We are finally on the verge of learning, once and for all, if Italians are white

How The Irish Became White
posted by y2karl at 12:27 AM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

I'm a bit behind but after seeing his twitter header photos I was like "hey, that looks like Hawaii" and sure enough, that's where he lived for a time and that is also where he read the Unabomber's manifesto:

Surfbreak residents are expected to contribute to the community, and Mangione played a role by founding the book club with Wexler and Martin. They recall Mangione had recently read Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” and was enthusiastic about sharing ideas with friends.
...
Wexler and Martin said they had suggested the book club read the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, as “a joke.” Mangione reviewed it on a Goodreads account, which has been widely cited on social media on Monday.

The rambling screed proved “painful to read” and so hard to engage with that it led to the demise of the club, Martin said.

From what I've seen on twitter, he went to Japan from Hawaii and was apparently there for a bit, hence his "ideas" for fixing Japan's birthrate problems.
posted by LostInUbe at 1:51 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

Alleged shooter went to U Penn
You know who else went to U Penn?
That's right: Elon Musk
A-and also: Donald J. Trump
posted by chavenet at 2:34 AM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

Sorry, I wasn't listening, I was drawing a Hot Luigi
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:34 AM on December 10, 2024

Southeast Asian comedy hour: Thai tweeter yammi cracking jokes (upon discovering the fact) that he might be the first white man to travel to Bali* and actually came back a better person, and Indonesians are like, can't believe universal Indonesian healthcare radicalized him** (sample exchange).

*There's an ongoing sore point about how westerners treat a place like Bali, is I think all the context you need

**Extra layer of jokes being it's not exactly great either (leading to well-off Sumaterans doing medical tourism in Singapore or Malaysia).
posted by cendawanita at 3:06 AM on December 10, 2024 [12 favorites]

After reading more about Mangione I just feel bad for him. His future is not good and he seemed to be really hurting.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:29 AM on December 10, 2024 [6 favorites]

kinda sus tbh
posted by chavenet at 5:27 AM on December 10, 2024 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I had a bizarre medical misadventure in Bali and I still marvel at how I received excellent care that cost me almost nothing (under $50 and only because I was neither a resident nor citizen of Indonesia). I tell the story often to illustrate what we could have in the US, if only…
posted by carmicha at 5:39 AM on December 10, 2024 [7 favorites]

But Luigi, why murder? "Because I am an anarchist, because I am poor, because I love the workers and I desire to see the death of the rich." (h/t)
posted by mittens at 5:47 AM on December 10, 2024 [7 favorites]

Something which I find a little odd is how I've heard this joke a bunch of ways, but no one seems to acknowledge that pre-existing conditions aren't allowed as a reason for denial since 2014, as a result of the ACA.

You're right. All of our acerbic remarks should include a disclaimer which explains that even though health insurance companies still have many resources with which to deny care guard against the pressures that exist for unnecessary care, denying care specifically because of preexisting conditions is against federal law thanks to the ACA.

It seems to me that if you want to make progress, you have to acknowledge the progress that has been made, so that you can learn from it and build on it.

And how should we "acknowledge the progress that has been made"? By pretending that the ACA fixed everything forever?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:54 AM on December 10, 2024 [9 favorites]

I have concepts of a joke that would be a really funny response to that.
posted by phunniemee at 5:56 AM on December 10, 2024 [9 favorites]

It seems to me that there is a strong possibility of the shooter's actions being at least partially motivated by psychosis, especially first-episode psychosis where there might not be much of a mental health history to indicate an issue. He is in the age window where the onset of symptoms of pyschosis is most prevalent. I don't do this to suggest that his actions were irrational, but in combination with the obvious failures of the healthcare industry, there could be notions of being a specially gifted person "on a mission" to enact justice. It's not inconsistent with that - and might help explain some of the less-well-thought-out. post-murder parts of this plan (not leaving the country, crossing PA multiple times, etc).
posted by Miko at 6:16 AM on December 10, 2024 [6 favorites]

Also being missing for a few weeks ahead of the plot and his family being concerned about that.
posted by Miko at 6:18 AM on December 10, 2024 [5 favorites]

I think I read he was missing for months? My god those poor parents.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:35 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

Woke up still thinking about all of this, after dreaming of someone trying to run me down by driving a car up a hillside. I don't think I'm the only one whose PTSD (some medical PTSD) has definitely been triggered these past few days. Mostly I'm just trying to write through it and do something productive with the energy. Usually I try not to think too hard about it all, because my own and my family's medical trauma were a large part of what led me to change my life entirely 6 years ago.

There's the pain, and there's the way the pain changes you and the way others relate to you. It can be a particularly devastating fall for those who have all the advantages going in, to realize the system is designed to crush even them. We're all vulnerable to it, because we're human, we have limited energy and capacity for pain, and the current medical system in the U.S. is built to exploit that and profit from it.

And this is the thought I had, after seeing headlines that confirm the severe back pain angle. No one knows exactly how they would respond to traumatic circumstances until they're in them, but this is...so not surprising, to those of us who have been through it. Again, it is a testament to our collective fortitude as a people, and our overall decorum, that more people don't get there. But the thing that people don't want to understand, because it would terrify them to really look that in the face, is that anyone could arrive at that place after 6 months of chronic pain and surgery.

I remember looking up the stats on disability when the returning president was up for election the first time, years ago, and determining that more than 75 percent of people in this country will be affected at some point in their life by that administration's discriminatory policies, especially the ones that seek to further marginalize those with disabilities. People tend to get upset when they realize the system is built to destroy them so it doesn't have to pay them.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the alleged shooter reached this dark place at a time when the future looks bleak because of that returning administration. And again, this could happen to any of us—we're all just one bad medical event away from feeling like we have nothing to lose. My personal response to feeling like that was to change my life dramatically. I figure that if I no longer want to live the life I'm living, I might as well give another way of living a shot. But other people will decide to give something or someone else a shot.

The execs really should be more terrified by that. Ironically, the guy they think is there to help their businesses by removing regulation is actually paving the way for more unrest like this. If you read Sarah Kendzior's books, it becomes clear that's actually one thing the returning president's foreign kleptocrat friends want: to expose and use the inherent state of inequity we have under this form of capitalism to foment unrest that further destabilizes things.

Some people feel more comfortable when they other him, accordingly, and suggest that the alleged shooter was inherently a bad person in some way, was psychotic, was right-leaning. I would suggest that these might just be polite fictions that help us explain away our collective fear of disability and what it might do to our psyche. I would guess that most people respond to their disability with some despair, and most are not psychotic. When you face traumatic life events that leave you in pain and limit your potential, it's normal to feel some kind of a way about that.

Some people think it's best not to talk about these things, though. No sense in getting people riled up. But I'm of the mindset that the sunshine is the best disinfectant—if anything, we should be talking about the strategies of government and industry more, to disarm them and collectively come together around supporting each other and dismantling the corrupt corporate institutions that divide us and harm us. All of us are just one medical disaster away from feeling the kind of despair the alleged shooter sunk into recently. We need to take care of each other, and part of that care is talking about it, up to our respective capacities to do so, and trying to do something about it.

It's hard to actually do anything about it, of course. That's by design. But more people speaking out could help create a groundswell to change things. That is the hopeful thought in all of this.
posted by limeonaire at 6:41 AM on December 10, 2024 [32 favorites]

All of us are just one medical disaster away from feeling the kind of despair the alleged shooter sunk into recently.

Repeating for emphasis.
posted by phunniemee at 6:49 AM on December 10, 2024 [15 favorites]

> then today he got a normal amount of unlucky

Mean reversion is a harsh mistress.
posted by atbash at 7:06 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

Allegedly written by Mangione: https://archive.is/7jUsF
Another substack speculating on Mangione's chronic pain: https://shatterzone.substack.com/p/alleged-ceo-shooter-luigi-mangione
posted by extramundane at 7:19 AM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

NYTimes is also reporting he's now been charged with 2nd degree murder, which while IANL, seems odd? I mean, it was clearly premeditated. Can any lawyer-Mefites explain?

I haven’t practiced in New York and am not barred yet, but a casual look shows Murder 1 in New York is generally reserved for special and aggravated circumstances: killing a cop, torturous murder, terrorism murder, etc. The only main sentencing difference between it and murder 2 is that it technically includes the option of the death penalty. Since juries can’t determine sentences, I could easily see a prosecutor not wanting a jury to balk at that possibility and let him off entirely.
posted by corb at 7:32 AM on December 10, 2024 [3 favorites]

I don't think New York has capital punishment.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:43 AM on December 10, 2024

Alright, I pulled out my laptop rather than just checking quickly on my phone. Looks like you're right, the Court of Appeals declared that part of the statute unconstitutional. Here's NY's murder in the first degree. The only way I could see they could get him on that would be under the terrorism angle, and that would be a real uphill sell.

Additional fun facts for murder two that would make it difficult to prosecute:

except that in any prosecution under this subdivision, it is an affirmative defense that: (a)(i) The defendant acted under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance for which there was a reasonable explanation or excuse, the reasonableness of which is to be determined from the viewpoint of a person in the defendant’s situation under the circumstances as the defendant believed them to be.

which means that it's possible the defense might be able to argue that there he felt there was a reasonable explanation for why he killed the CEO.
posted by corb at 7:58 AM on December 10, 2024 [6 favorites]

If you've been watching the political-economic-pundit discussions around the murder, you'll note that a certain class of commentator is tut-tutting not just over the morality of the act, but that the act misses the point, since the miserable state of expensive US healthcare is not the insurance company's fault. (Noah Smith for example poked his head out of the rabbit hutch to say this in his recent newsletter.) That is, while everyone hates insurance, the real villains lie elsewhere--hospitals, drug companies, doctors, all jacking up their prices as high as possible.

So here's Matt Bruenig to point out those pundits are just wrong. Not only do we waste half a trillion dollars a year on administrative costs, but insurance companies only have one way to increase profits (emphasis mine):

"The failure of insurers in this regard is not just incompetence either. There is good reason to believe it’s malicious. Commentators often think that insurers want to bring down provider rates because they imagine that, if insurers can bring them down, then they could book more profit. But under the medical-loss-ratio (MLR) rules, insurer’s administrative expenses (which includes their profits) are capped as a percentage of how much they pay to providers. So the higher the provider rates are, the more profits insurers can actually book. Individual insurance companies have to balance this dynamic with their ability to attract customers with lower premiums, but the private health insurance sector as a whole actually benefits when provider rates are high."
posted by mittens at 8:00 AM on December 10, 2024 [27 favorites]

Confession: ever since the early photos were posted I can't help but think of the Matt Reeves's Batman (specifically their version of The Drifter!Bruce) and I know at one point during the manhunt I made a crack over twt, if they'd thought of checking in with Bruce Wayne yet.

This whole day has been so weird for me. He's not fictional-character rich of course (or is he not, via his family?) but there's the tragic family background etc but really, I'm just thinking, How can I harness this? (edit: I'll even dress it up as psychic powers if it's worth something)

Disclaimer: I am not saying he's a superhero. I'm just saying I guess I twigged early that he was a person with means. And dramatics.
posted by cendawanita at 8:04 AM on December 10, 2024 [9 favorites]

NYTimes is also reporting he's now been charged with 2nd degree murder, which while IANL, seems odd? I mean, it was clearly premeditated. Can any lawyer-Mefites explain?

I'd speculate because that's the no-brainer charge that will easily stick. Might be upgraded as more information becomes available?
posted by mazola at 8:22 AM on December 10, 2024

It seems to me that there is a strong possibility of the shooter's actions being at least partially motivated by psychosis,

Quit parroting this hateful stigmatization of people experiencing psychosis. You’re carrying water for the gun lobby, who would rather persecute a marginalized group than face their own complicity in violence.

Even if the shooter was a violent person who experiences psychosis, it was extremely unlikely that the shooting was either proximate to or motivated by psychosis.

So no, there isn’t a strong possibility that the shooter was motivated by psychosis and it only seems that way to you because you’ve internalized hateful rhetoric.
posted by Headfullofair at 8:40 AM on December 10, 2024 [19 favorites]

As someone with chronic pain who spent years begging monthly for “CVS Specialty Pharmacy” to pretty please send me the drugs my doctor prescribed and did the bullshit prior authorization for so I could keep the job that allows me to pay for my insurance…yes, chronic pain is a sufficient explanation.
posted by hydropsyche at 8:49 AM on December 10, 2024 [24 favorites]

it only seems that way to you because you’ve internalized hateful rhetoric.

It seems that way to me because I know people who experienced adult-onset pyschosis and live with related diagnoses. I understand the problematics. It's just something that could well be in the mix. Despite the gun industry's manipulation of mental health rhetoric for their own ends, the consequences of mental health remain real.

I also recognize the seriousness of the chronic pain issue and the ways that could motivate unusual activity.

In time we'll know more about the shooter and won't need to debate it.
posted by Miko at 8:52 AM on December 10, 2024 [12 favorites]

Most people with psychotic disorders will never commit an act of violence. However, the risk of violence committed by people with schizophrenia is higher than the general population. Violence risk is also known to be highest during the first episode of psychosis compared to later stages of illness...The prevalence of violence remained high at all-time points, suggesting that more targeted, holistic, and early interventions are needed for clinical FEP groups.
posted by Miko at 8:55 AM on December 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

Everybody assumes there will be a trial but I imagine the Prosecution might also be very willing to avoid the public spectacle and offer him a good plea deal.
posted by vacapinta at 8:59 AM on December 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

the act misses the point, since the miserable state of expensive US healthcare is not the insurance company's fault

I’m sympathetic to the argument that insurers aren’t the problem with American healthcare, but they are a piece of the problem anyone can look at at ask why the hell does it work like that?
posted by atoxyl at 9:11 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

The mentally ill are more often targets of violence than perpetrators. Have we considered that the CEO might have been mentally ill?
posted by stet at 9:17 AM on December 10, 2024 [3 favorites]

Any jury trial risks jury nullification, I imagine this does go to trial since he will refuse any plea deal.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:21 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

stet, that kinda just feels like you're trolling (or at least arguing in bad faith) - there has been zero reporting on the mental health of Thompson. Whereas there has been reporting that the shooter basically dropped out of contact from friends/family after a back surgery, and they were worried about his mental well-being to the point that his mom filed a missing person report. Yes, it's inaccurate (and dangerous) to argue that mentally unwell people are inherently violent, but nobody in this thread is doing that.

As for a trial - given that his family has money, he will presumably get a good lawyer. If a trial is judged to not be in his best interest, then I wouldn't bet on a trial happening. At the same time, it's hard to imagine the prosecution would accept anything less than a murder charge in this case - but I could be wrong.

To return to the Bruenig article that mittens linked to above, one of the more radical parts of Graeber's book, Bullshit Jobs, is his argument that contrary to the popular imaginary, for-profit corporations are incredibly inefficient and wasteful, often much more so than government bureaucracies. That yes, sometimes government regulations give rise to strange expenditures of labor, but it's companies, despite being "responsible to shareholders," where you find employees whose only job is to essentially make their boss feel important by way of having a lackey, for example. Whenever people argue that government-run healthcare would be inefficient, what's unsaid is the mistaken belief that corporations (and capitalism) represent some sort ideal efficiency.
posted by coffeecat at 9:30 AM on December 10, 2024 [20 favorites]

I don't think New York has capital punishment.


The prosecution has a very clear interest in pressing charges that will not drive the jury to nullify.
posted by ocschwar at 9:54 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

WaPo: people are now trying to make merch of this.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:01 AM on December 10, 2024

Miko, Disordered thinking is a major hallmark of psychosis— are you really trying to claim the shooter had disordered thinking?

You keep pointing to articles that discuss violent behavior and psychosis when we are talking about a planned assassination. You haven’t presented a single data source first that directly evaluates connections between murder and first episode psychosis (the data source of your previous comment states “there were no homicides reported in samples of patients with first-episode psychosis“). All of your sources extrapolate a risk of homicide based on post-arrest psych evaluations. No where in your supposed evidence does anyone draw links between premeditated killings and psychosis. Because there is no causal link.

I’m sorry you have personal experiences with violence and psychosis but that does not give you a pass to slander people in mental health crisis as potential assassins or mass shooters.
posted by Headfullofair at 10:02 AM on December 10, 2024 [7 favorites]

Everybody assumes there will be a trial but I imagine the Prosecution might also be very willing to avoid the public spectacle and offer him a good plea deal.

It looks like you have to go down to manslaughter 1 before in New York you can't argue reasonable emotional disturbance as an affirmative defense, so prosecutor better make a *really* good deal. But also, pleas have to be submitted to the defendant, it's not the lawyer's choice: if this guy wants to put the healthcare system on trial, a trial is how he does it.
posted by corb at 10:07 AM on December 10, 2024 [3 favorites]

are you really trying to claim the shooter had disordered thinking

One can have e.g. a manic episode without being totally incapable of planning or out of touch with reality. I mean, I’m really not trying to diagnose him, this kind of thing is completely speculation and it could be completely unfounded, but I feel like the discussion around it is a little bit at cross purposes. The reason for the mental health speculation is that lots of people have horror stories about the healthcare system, but few of them do anything drastic about it. Combined with how ordinary he seemed until six months ago, and his odd behavior since, it gives the impression of something triggering some kind of “break” in his mental state, which doesn’t have to be literally psychosis. It doesn’t make his underlying experiences less sympathetic and it’s not about building up people experiencing psychosis as broadly dangerous.
posted by atoxyl at 10:48 AM on December 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

how ordinary he seemed

And yes, this is probably debatable because he seemed to be at least casually interested in some fringe-y things, but it just doesn’t seem like a terribly unusual set of fringe-y things for a certain kind of young tech-y guy.
posted by atoxyl at 10:53 AM on December 10, 2024

Trying to make merch? I've seen dozens of merch items already. They just ain't on Amazon.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:54 AM on December 10, 2024 [6 favorites]

And of COURSE there will be merch. This man has already become a kind of folk hero.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:55 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

This is completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people
posted by SystematicAbuse at 12:09 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

Not all of what he screamed was immediately intelligible. [The above article, ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:31 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

The reason for the mental health speculation is that lots of people have horror stories about the healthcare system, but few of them do anything drastic about it.

No, the reason for the mental health speculation is prejudice. Mental health is not predictive of violence.

Very few people do much of anything drastic. Low effort “he’s violent, must be mentally ill/psychotic” speculation is gross. Quit it.
posted by Headfullofair at 12:33 PM on December 10, 2024 [13 favorites]

Yes, please stop. You can get your fill of speculation about his mental state in the thousands of articles that will come out during the next year.

His actions seem rational to me.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:40 PM on December 10, 2024 [7 favorites]

I don't have access to Forbes, but one of their reporters tweeted out a screen shot from part of their article, which is about how some Reddit users recognized him as part of a back-pain sub Reddit. He once shared this advice:

"Keep trying different surgeons. 'Nobody will operate on my back until I'm at least 40 is nonsense....' Tell them you are unable to work/do your job....We live in a capitalist society. I've found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it's impacting your quality of life."

A lot of people commenting online that there are good reasons not to have back surgery. My dad also opted not to have back surgery at some point - not saying his situation was the same, but it strikes me that perhaps part of went wrong here is less that the shooter was denied health care, but that we have a system where patients really don't trust doctors, for understandable reasons. Because we know needed care often is denied due to corporate greed/cost cutting measures, many of us wonder if a doctor advises against a procedure if that's really what the doctor believes or if it's because of pressure from the health insurance company.
posted by coffeecat at 12:41 PM on December 10, 2024 [18 favorites]

"Tell them you are unable to work/do your job [...] I've found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain"

I have given this advice to so many people applying for disability.
posted by mittens at 12:49 PM on December 10, 2024 [24 favorites]

The reason for the mental health speculation is that lots of people have horror stories about the healthcare system, but few of them do anything drastic about it.

You have it backwards, I think.

The question isn't "Why did he do something so drastic?" but more "Why aren't we doing anything to stop this; individually or collectively."

Obamacare is a fucking joke and doesn't count. If anything it shows our own complicity in the circumstances. But I don't have an answer because we never hold the people accountable out of fear of "the other" (vote against Trump, we have to soften our stances, we have to give more private insurance, not universal single-payer; the market is the god we must all fellate, it shall not be questioned - we can't prosecute Trump, we have to delay delay delay prosecution. We can't prosecute Bush/Cheney, we have to let the fiction of gentlemanly war crimes go on, etc...)

It's like the Mark Fisher quote "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism".
We're all bound in this insane system setup to reinforce its own tendencies for evil, never striving towards something better, only ever and always attempting to allay the worst tendencies. And abusing appeals to the "strengths" of the system to drive more people into it (home ownership loans. Fuck public housing; Private Insurance, fuck public single payer; etc).

Until we can find a solution to deal with the rot at the heart of this country, there will only be more of this. But not enough to affect any change, so, like the rest of us, Luigi is also helpless, desperate and useless. I hope to be proven wrong, but I know this act won't affect any change.
posted by symbioid at 12:55 PM on December 10, 2024 [7 favorites]

Obamacare is a fucking joke

It really isn't. But you've probably never been denied health care insurance because you (checks notes) had hemorrhoids.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:57 PM on December 10, 2024 [13 favorites]

The real manifesto has been leaked. (link goes to Ken Klippenstein's Substack)

For those that don't want to click on a Substack:

“To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

posted by coffeecat at 12:59 PM on December 10, 2024 [31 favorites]

Obamacare is a fucking joke and doesn't count

Obamacare saved my life, pls do not besmirch. It's not a solution to The US Healthcare Problem, but it did fix many problems.
posted by phunniemee at 1:03 PM on December 10, 2024 [23 favorites]

This is the most amazing line to have ever appeared in a manifesto: "frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument".
posted by mittens at 1:05 PM on December 10, 2024 [37 favorites]

I don't really see it as a manifesto, it's more of a polite note to the police. Which is fine! He did it for the reasons we assumed, what more is there to say. I'll note that it also doesn't SOUND like "typical manifesto", it's rational and clear.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:07 PM on December 10, 2024 [21 favorites]

Aside from the point where he's irrationally smug about digital forensics, there's not really a lot that's wrong per se there.
posted by atbash at 1:26 PM on December 10, 2024 [3 favorites]

His "manifesto" sounds like a transcript of my side of a conversation during a thanksgiving gathering this year.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:30 PM on December 10, 2024 [11 favorites]

The prosecution has a very clear interest in pressing charges that will not drive the jury to nullify.

I guess I'm not sure what that has to do with New York not having the death penalty. There's not much public sympathy for health insurance companies. If Mangione requests a trial by jury, nullification would probably remain a risk for prosecution, regardless.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:36 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

"I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem which this margin is too small to contain."
posted by mittens at 1:46 PM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

From a Fortune article about Mangione and his back:

By the time of the message on X, Mangione had gone several months without contacting some members of friends and family, who had become unsure of his whereabouts. The mysterious period coincided with the aftermath of a difficult back surgery that reportedly left Mangione in constant discomfort, multiple reports have said.

So a bunch of doctors were all "no, don't get back surgery, that's a bad idea" and then he found a doctor who would do it, and then it went really badly and left him in even worse pain than before. Reminds me of my SIL's boyfriend who, in his 60s, needed a hip replacement that would allow him to go skiing, and doctors were like "no, we're not going to do that, it's a bad idea" and then he found one who would do it, and he got it, and went skiing, and now he can't walk. AFAIK he hasn't killed anyone, though.

Yeah, our healthcare system is a shitshow, but doctors in general are not giving you bad advice. Individual doctors? That's like flipping a coin. But if multiple doctors concur, you should probably listen. Obvious caveats for women and minorities for whom the healthcare system is full of blind spots and pitfalls. But for fit-ass young rich white dude? Should have listened to the doctors.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:47 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

Where did you read that multiple doctors told him not to get the surgery?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:58 PM on December 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

Yikes guess he was dumb then for trying to access care *clip clap hands* we must be done here
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:59 PM on December 10, 2024 [10 favorites]

It's in that Forbes article I quoted above.
posted by coffeecat at 2:19 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

> Where did you read that multiple doctors told him not to get the surgery?

I think that idea comes from this Forbes article which contains claims that he gave this advice in a back pain subreddit: “Keep trying different surgeons. ‘Nobody will operate on my back until I’m at least 40’ is nonsense coming from a medical professional who lacks perspective.” Which sort of implies that he had to try multiple doctors.

In any case though, he doesn't mention pain or his back in the "manifesto" at all.
posted by ericost at 2:19 PM on December 10, 2024 [3 favorites]

Unfortunately our culture is full of examples in both real life and in fiction where someone suffering from afflictions that aren't being satisfactorily treated finally finds the one maverick doctor who knows what's wrong and can provide relief.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:23 PM on December 10, 2024 [3 favorites]

All this talk about the motivations of the shooter has reminded me of Mark Felt. He didn't become Deep Throat (the Watergate one, not the original one) because he was some super-patriot dedicated to the rule of law or a subversive Commie pinko trying to bring down the corrupt Nixon regime from the inside. He was mainly mad that he didn't get promoted to FBI Director after J. Edgar died. And we didn't find that out until almost 30 years after the fact.
posted by mhum at 2:23 PM on December 10, 2024 [9 favorites]

Joshua Hill, on Bluesky:

I'm not convinced that the politics of the killer matter more than the politics of the act.

posted by adrienneleigh at 2:27 PM on December 10, 2024 [19 favorites]

Perhaps it be worth asking what video games that CEOs play, to see if there is a connection between the violence in those games and the violence that business executives choose to inflict on people IRL.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:37 PM on December 10, 2024 [16 favorites]

Well, and sometimes the maverick doctor is right. To give one example, my mom started having symptoms of Dupuytren's, where your hand gradually loses mobility and gets stuck in a curled up claw-like pose. Radiation therapy is common in Europe but for some reason not in the US. It took her awhile to find a doctor willing to do it, and then she either had to fight with insurance or just pay out of pocket (I forget) - but her hand is completely normal now.

Back surgery is obviously different (like I shared above, my dad elected to not have back surgery after looking into possible downsides). But the experience of finding it hard to get doctors to take seriously conditions that aren't life and death matters, but still impact one's quality of life significantly, is pretty common and certainly encourages a broad societal distrust of doctors - even among rich white men.
posted by coffeecat at 2:38 PM on December 10, 2024 [6 favorites]

Piecing together Luigi Mangione’s lost year
posted by Miko at 2:52 PM on December 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

I'm not convinced that the politics of the killer matter more than the politics of the act.

Does this guy seem like a complete weirdo? Absolutely.

Did the guy do something the incoming president bragged he could do himself?

Absolutely, but one block over.
posted by East14thTaco at 3:19 PM on December 10, 2024 [11 favorites]

Perhaps it be worth asking what video games that CEOs play, to see if there is a connection between the violence in those games and the violence that business executives choose to inflict on people IRL.

No please don't, it's a slippery slope and we'll probably find a health insurance CEO who also builds pools with no ladder for their Sims to drown in and things are going to get real uncomfy for me.
posted by phunniemee at 3:26 PM on December 10, 2024 [11 favorites]

ladders are only available for ppo+ members
posted by i used to be someone else at 3:43 PM on December 10, 2024 [13 favorites]

Have Trump or Musk had anything to say on this yet? Wondering how they might square their membership of the craven billionaire class and populist instincts in the framing.
posted by roolya_boolya at 4:04 PM on December 10, 2024

Dr. Glaucomflecken again: "Two things can be true: One: Murder is bad. Even bad people who do bad things don't deserve to be executed. It's OK to think that. It can also be true that United Healthcare is an evil corporation that has caused pain and suffering to millions and millions of people over the years. ..." (YouTube short)
posted by maudlin at 4:07 PM on December 10, 2024 [6 favorites]

our healthcare system is a shitshow, but doctors in general are not giving you bad advice

It's not that doctors are giving you bad advice, exactly: it's that they're giving you advice for the poors, and it ruins fucking lives.

I have a really good relationship with my primary care physician, who is a VA doctor I have seen consistently for the past eight years. As a result of that, they're pretty open with me about when they aren't recommending me for care because VA won't pay for it, and because they're not allowed to prescribe care that VA won't pay for, or that shitty legislators have decided is immoral.

VA often doesn't pay for care when it thinks the care is too expensive for the benefit you receive - and it's more generous than many health care providers. There's a lot of conditions out there that do have solutions, but they're costly solutions, either in money or doctor-hours. And so the healthcare wants you to try the shitty cheap versions first.

Here's a good example. I have had fertility issues for the past twelve years. The best thing for me to have a baby, that would have given me the best chance, would have been to cut my original shitty partner out entirely, and to undergo IUI or IVF with donated sperm. Except that some time ago, shitty conservative legislators decided it was only okay for federal funds to pay for fertility work for married ladies. So I stayed in a shitty marriage for ten years in part because I knew if I got divorced I would no longer have access to fertility care.

Why ten years? Why didn't I just give up immediately? Because that's where the shitty healthcare industry comes in. Because they were like 'oh, you need to lose fifty pounds in order to have an optimal chance of these pregnancies taking'. Is that bad advice? No, it's perfectly good advice. However, what made it shitty was the followup: "So thus, since you only have a limited number of tries your insurance will pay for, we're not going to refer you for fertility services until you've lost fifty pounds." So then I spent years trying to lose weight "naturally"- because of course, weight loss drugs or liposuction or what have you are considered cosmetic even though they're still the barrier to care. And then even when I *did* manage to lose weight, I had to go through a stepped program where first they tried me on medications, but not like, effective medications - the cheapest medications.

Then when I finally got to the stage where they would let me do IUI, they said they were only allowed to impregnate me with marital sperm. So then I had to wait while my spouse, who had sperm issues, went through his own year of shitty medications, and honestly he was in medical noncompliance which meant he had to start at the beginning multiple times.

Meanwhile, my fertility kept getting worse and worse.

The best medically indicated answer would have been to freeze eggs when I first mentioned difficulties, then to try the most effective medication, then if that failed, to go for the IUI and IVF if that failed. But that's not what they did. And I still don't have a baby.
posted by corb at 4:18 PM on December 10, 2024 [31 favorites]

Even bad people who do bad things don't deserve to be executed.

no, not executed, which is something states do; the penal system is an abomination. but a society constantly on the sharp end of an engineered situation where basic human needs are not met except unreliably, as an epiphenomenon, a side effect of a parasite class's mission to opt out of humanity through the acquisition of wealth and power, has, irrespective of the exact circumstances/views of the specific people involved in specific incidents, the right to defend itself.
posted by busted_crayons at 4:59 PM on December 10, 2024 [6 favorites]

Perhaps it be worth asking what video games that CEOs play, to see if there is a connection between the violence in those games and the violence that business executives choose to inflict on people IRL.


The game is called CEO.

It's like pinball. The goal is to maximize the market capitalization of your company. There is no upper bound to how far you might reach. The only bounds are those that limit the means you're allowed to employ to maximize the score.

It's pinball. It really is pinball. And even things like the Sopranos themed pinball I used to play are still pinball. Even that game didn't give me any associations to any violent act, so you can't expect an anodyne quarterly report to do it.

SO about limiting the means a CEO is allowed to employ: we have legislatures for that purpose.

(I'm speaking from my years at a quantitative hedge fund. )
posted by ocschwar at 5:01 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

Corb, that's shitty and sorry you dealt with that

I wish everyone coming here to play Philosophy 101 parlour games re: acceptable actions during End Times would just fuck right off
posted by ginger.beef at 5:36 PM on December 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

In historical terms this might be one of if not the most rational assassinations
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:47 PM on December 10, 2024 [14 favorites]

ocschwar, if your Sopranos themed pinball game actually sent out orders into the real world to beat down and kill real people when you hit certain bumpers, then yes you would be associated with those violent acts, as would the designer of the pinball game and the proprietor who hosted it. The perpetuators of the capitalist system (who are its winners) and those who choose to play for the high score, purposefully hitting all those bumpers, are morally culpable for the harm they cause, even if the political and legal system sees their acts as neutral or laudable.
posted by rikschell at 6:08 PM on December 10, 2024 [6 favorites]

Forgive me, the news has been moving so fast, is it correct he’s been living g on his own and isolated for about a year? Do we know how he was financially supporting himself?
posted by girlmightlive at 6:10 PM on December 10, 2024

He worked as a data engineer for about 4 years or so, probably made well over half a million dollars in that time.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:51 PM on December 10, 2024

symbioid: The question is : What are WE going to do about it? Even more important: HOW? I am not saying take up arms and kill. But clearly, "Obamacare" sold us out and the world STILL hates the private insurance companies. So what's next? Just let the CEO's hunker down and make change that much harder? Whinge harder? Scold harder? Vote harder? Push for Single Payer? Just keep doing the same old same old?

The legislative changes that do or don't follow from this will be a good indication of how ossified the American political system has become.

Thousands of officials were assassinated in the late 1800s and early 1900s in pre-Revolutionary Russia, just an endless stream of assassination after assassination, and it didn't change anything because the system was locked rigidly into place.

Much smaller amounts of violence in the UK and the USA during the same period led to changes in laws and political leadership that took at least small steps toward more rights for workers.

Is America still capable of this kind of change? How rigid has it become?
posted by clawsoon at 7:15 PM on December 10, 2024 [7 favorites]

ocschwar, if your Sopranos themed pinball game actually sent out orders into the real world to beat down and kill real people when you hit certain bumpers, then yes you would be associated with those violent acts, as would the designer of the pinball game and the proprietor who hosted it.


If the pinball machine actually did that, nothing in the gameplay would make me aware of it. That information would have to come by other channels, and if the only way you could stop me from playing was to shoot me in the back while I played, then Metafilter would be discussing my murder rather than Thompson's.
posted by ocschwar at 7:40 PM on December 10, 2024

Forgive me, the news has been moving so fast, is it correct he’s been living g on his own and isolated for about a year?

Three words: frugal rich kid.

I know a few. If your family is wealthy and you're willing to live an austere life, you can do just about anything. Art? Sure. Activism? Sure. Idealistic non-remunerative career? Sure. Whatever you want. "Just buy him some bananas. What does one even cost, $10?"
posted by ocschwar at 7:43 PM on December 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

If the pinball machine actually did that, nothing in the gameplay would make me aware of it.

Are you suggesting that Thompson didn't know that his decisions in the name of profit maximization caused people to die?
posted by Gadarene at 8:14 PM on December 10, 2024 [3 favorites]

I said nothing in the gameplay would make me aware of it.
I did not say he didn't know.
posted by ocschwar at 8:25 PM on December 10, 2024

My kid and his friends are photoshopping Luigi Mangione into casual pics with themselves.

"Me and my bud, Luigi, just chilling and watching TV between the hours of 6 and 8 am EST, December 4th."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:31 PM on December 10, 2024 [27 favorites]

This seems like a very odd time to be a parent indeed.
posted by stet at 8:40 PM on December 10, 2024 [5 favorites]

*in a good way.
posted by stet at 8:41 PM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

1-star McDonald’s reviews and sympathetic merch: Companies try to stop online support for CEO killer suspect
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:12 PM on December 10, 2024 [5 favorites]

> Companies try to stop online support for CEO killer suspect

STOP THE CHAIRS
posted by lucidium at 4:40 AM on December 11, 2024 [1 favorite]

Is America still capable of this kind of change? How rigid has it become?

Ironically, what we're asking for--consolidation of a big industry under a single big player, with smaller companies layered around--seems like exactly what would happen anyway if you let the market do its thing, it's just the single big company is Medicare rather than Apple or Google. It just seems so easy.
posted by mittens at 4:43 AM on December 11, 2024

I love how much The Take from people on the left is all like, "Sure, yes, I sympathized with him when all I knew was that he murdered someone, but now that I know that he listened to Joe Rogan, it's like I don't know WHAT to think anymore!!"
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:24 AM on December 11, 2024 [11 favorites]

Kittens for breakfast, that’s the same puritanicalism that got W elected in 2000 and Trump elected in 2016. The good is always the enemy of the perfect, and pragmatism is no substitute for fanatical orthodoxy. And if you disagree, you’re canceled.
posted by HVACDC_Bag at 5:34 AM on December 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

The Take from people on the left is all like,

Endless hot takes = social media, I thought we'd established that by now. Or did you just want to pop by to dunk on the "people on the left" who happened to have stupid opinions

Newsflash: kfb has come across people purportedly on the left who made hasty and ill-conceived comments about something
posted by ginger.beef at 5:43 AM on December 11, 2024 [6 favorites]

Kittens for breakfast, that’s the same puritanicalism that got W elected in 2000 and Trump elected in 2016.

lol no it’s not. People, like our dark haired Italian hero, don’t have coherent political opinions. Who are the fanatically orthodox in this scenario?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:54 AM on December 11, 2024 [4 favorites]

"Sure, yes, I sympathized with him when all I knew was that he murdered someone, but now that I know that he listened to Joe Rogan, it's like I don't know WHAT to think anymore!!"

I don't know the actual, like, political-science words for what I'm about to say, but: It feels like people haven't really taken on that aside from polarizations like "authoritarian vs democratic," "capitalist vs socialist," "culturally conservative vs culturally open," there's a very important "pro-system vs anti-system" polarization opening up that doesn't map neatly to any of the others, and can for some people be their only polarization.
posted by mittens at 6:03 AM on December 11, 2024 [12 favorites]

Look, if you don't think it's funny that people can endorse a guy getting shot, but have huge reservations about a guy getting shot if the guy who shot him didn't have perfect politics, I'm not sure what to say, lol.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:08 AM on December 11, 2024 [8 favorites]

I mean, these are the same people who thought it was supposed to rock the house that Kamala was hanging out with the Cheneys, right? How many people did Dick Cheney kill? He shot one guy in the face and made him apologize!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:12 AM on December 11, 2024 [1 favorite]

i do not know what it means that the same people (the left?) thought cheney would rock the house (positive? negative?) are the same people (the left?) who are making jokes (or being serious?) about cancelling him for his podcast choices

what are the categories and actions here; does saying 'i still hate hate health insurance ceos but now i think the guy is less sexy' get bush elected?
posted by sagc at 6:30 AM on December 11, 2024 [6 favorites]

[T]here's a very important "pro-system vs anti-system" polarization opening up that doesn't map neatly to any of the others....

I've been struggling to come up with a way of expressing this too, but I found a Politico article on a theory by Hobsbawn that seems like a good start.
posted by cardboard at 6:35 AM on December 11, 2024 [5 favorites]

Can we not talk about what random people on the internet, that one person has observed, that aren't in this thread, are saying?
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:37 AM on December 11, 2024 [8 favorites]

Police say they've recovered a notebook:

“What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents.”

posted by box at 6:39 AM on December 11, 2024 [5 favorites]

MetaFilter: Can we not talk about what random people on the internet, that one person has observed, that aren't in this thread, are saying?

But seriously, I think maybe the point is that the left is missing the moment if we dismiss opportunities to connect across the political spectrum around our shared contempt for health-care companies' actions, just because the alleged shooter was open-minded and had wide-ranging reading/listening habits.
posted by limeonaire at 6:45 AM on December 11, 2024 [4 favorites]

"The left" isn't a block, especially based off some random comments online
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:48 AM on December 11, 2024 [6 favorites]

This reflects back to girlmightlive's earlier concern that this would simply turn into a meme, and any political power behind it dissolve. The worst outcome here is business as usual: Political leaders insisting that we let the courts and legislators do the real work; social media pushing us to think about nothing but his abs and whether he liked the correct tweets.

"The Left," broadly construed, has developed a lot of tools to diffuse and eliminate itself as a powerful challenge. Tiny frying pan is right to say it isn't a singular block--but it is a series of self-neutering blocks, each with a different outlook for how best not to effect change.
posted by mittens at 6:56 AM on December 11, 2024 [4 favorites]

The left isn't homogeneous, except in the ways that make my point. Then they are all the exact same, with no variation.
posted by Dysk at 7:03 AM on December 11, 2024 [12 favorites]

"Me and my bud, Luigi, just chilling and watching TV between the hours of 6 and 8 am EST, December 4th."

I love this so much and it makes me wish lawyers didn't have rules about candor to the tribunal, because it would be the most hilarious thing in the world to call those all alibis and make the prosecution discredit each one.
posted by corb at 7:21 AM on December 11, 2024 [11 favorites]

Everyone's algorithms reveal a different "reality" but mine show mostly people on the left mocking people who are using purity politics to dismiss this guy, and the only people saying "See! he's a bad guy! he likes Rogan!" being milquetoast center-left liberals. I'm sure one can find examples to the contrary, but I'd say that this is an interesting moment of watching the online left shift a bit.
posted by coffeecat at 7:22 AM on December 11, 2024 [12 favorites]

let's not forget that for most if not all of us, this is a spectacle. Words and images on a screen. We have an alleged killer and whatever we consume via reporting and this endless chatter.

for me, the impact is that people are talking about their experience with the system. people are angry, and some of those people will take action on their anger. more targeted deaths? I'm hopeful we see movements, direct action that leads to real change, but either way.

if all the hot-takes and chatter contribute to that somehow, well I guess we're all doing our part
posted by ginger.beef at 7:27 AM on December 11, 2024 [9 favorites]

Anyway, a few things that I've found interesting recently:

1. He so far has a very local lawyer. I am not a lawyer so I'll admit maybe I'm not the best judge, but based on the press conference the guy seems not exactly who I'd want representing me. But exactly who I'd want representing this guy if I was casting a Netflix show. (Twitter link to press conference)

2. He's pleading not-guilty and fighting extradition to NY. So this is going to be a fairly drawn out ordeal. How long will the Internet's attention to him remain?

3. Since the shooter lived in what appears to be more or less a fancy dorm in Hawaii for awhile, and then spent some time in Japan, he has a fairly international social web. People from a variety of countries have posted photos of him with messages like "He was such a sweet housemate!" Which is to say, this guy's privilege has helped this story have a more global reach. (And he was clearly not a frugal rich kid as suggested above - his rent in Hawaii was 2k a month for a tiny room!)

4. Grateful to Klippenstein for releasing the manifesto - it's wild how major media outlets are both refusing to release it and misconstruing it. As many have noted here, it's a rather mild and measured manifesto - reading the news, you'd think it was a long deranged rant.
posted by coffeecat at 7:38 AM on December 11, 2024 [16 favorites]

I am not a lawyer so I'll admit maybe I'm not the best judge, but based on the press conference the guy seems not exactly who I'd want representing me

He doesn't seem too bad. He's doing some important things - referring to the charges from NY prosecutors as "some documents" because he's challenging them, not accepting that NYPD photos are 'evidence', framing them as 'some photos'. He's protecting the privilege, not giving any details of what Mangione has said, demanding the fullness of defense, and not responding to any 'what if X happens'.

It's also worth noting that you want to choose your lawyers in part for their relationship with judges and how they're going to appear before judges. If he's going before a small town Pennsylvania judge, you're going to want him to have a small town Pennsylvania lawyer so there's no unconscious reaction to 'big city Manhattan lawyers'. Now you'd want additional counsel or a firm helping him, but you'd want the front facing guy to be local.

However, the fact that there doesn't seem to be additional counsel on this and he was hired so late, my bet is that his family isn't helping him out with funding the lawyers.
posted by corb at 7:51 AM on December 11, 2024 [16 favorites]

his rent in Hawaii was 2k a month for a tiny room!

Chump change when you're making 150k+ a year
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:59 AM on December 11, 2024 [1 favorite]

Ah interesting, my judgement of him was his vibe seemed needlessly showy/unserious, but yeah, I wonder how long until the family step in and increase his legal team.
posted by coffeecat at 8:09 AM on December 11, 2024

Well, I wrote a song about it, so there you go.
posted by limeonaire at 8:19 AM on December 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

his rent in Hawaii was 2k a month for a tiny room!

Yeah, with the exploitation by landlords in Hawaii it's not exactly a shock he got radicalized.
posted by stet at 8:42 AM on December 11, 2024 [4 favorites]

there's a very important "pro-system vs anti-system" polarization opening up that doesn't map neatly to any of the others

One of the things I've been thinking about the 2024 election is that the Republicans were perceived by many -- particularly by low-information voters -- as the more "anti-system" party. In this they were helped substantially by the Democrats, where the litany of high-profile endorsements (Oprah, Bill Gates, Taylor Swift, the Cheneys, etc.) served very much to help paint them as the party of the status quo.
posted by Slothrup at 9:20 AM on December 11, 2024 [12 favorites]

Sorry, it was too early when I posted before; I obviously meant "centrist shitlibs" by the left, forgetting that "the left" now means socialists, which is a different thing completely, a real "People's Front of Judea/ Judean People's Front" situation. Nevertheless, I am merely a random person on the internet, as opposed to the rest of you, who are of course the very specific people on the internet.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:32 AM on December 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

The occasional CEO assassination should be able to cleanly replace about a million post-call "How are we doing?" surveys.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:33 AM on December 11, 2024 [7 favorites]

Sorry,

just don't interrupt my propensity to be a humourless killjoy
posted by ginger.beef at 9:48 AM on December 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

> coffeecat: "Ah interesting, my judgement of him was his vibe seemed needlessly showy/unserious"

I saw someone comment on TikTok that he got Joey Gallo Joey Callo Vinny Gambini as his lawyer.
posted by mhum at 9:49 AM on December 11, 2024 [4 favorites]

I mean, after reading his "mini-festo", my impression is that he's not wrong, and I agree with someone way upthread that his politics feel unformed like many twentysomethings. I mean, if you asked me to articulate my political outlook at 23, the best I could have done is say "the gay community is good, feminists are good." I mean, I honestly wasn't very interested in politics until maybe a little over a decade ago?

Wossface seems more like an exasperated in-chronic-pain person than an ardent right wing bro. Someone who is fuzzy on actual stances other than that healthcare in America is absolute shit.
posted by Kitteh at 9:57 AM on December 11, 2024 [6 favorites]

He's probably got better politics than 98% of straight white male 6 packed good looking italian american ivy league engineers that work in tech.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:00 AM on December 11, 2024 [16 favorites]

straight white male 6 packed good looking italian american ivy league engineers that work in tech

wasn't that a song title on a mid-2000s collaboration between Le Tigre and Kraftwerk
posted by ginger.beef at 10:09 AM on December 11, 2024 [10 favorites]

“‘Was The UnitedHeathcare CEO Killer Milkshake Ducked,’ And Other Pointless Questions,” Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day, 11 December 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 10:09 AM on December 11, 2024 [6 favorites]

This assassin has EVERYTHING
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:13 AM on December 11, 2024 [10 favorites]

One of the things I've been thinking about the 2024 election is that the Republicans were perceived by many -- particularly by low-information voters -- as the more "anti-system" party. In this they were helped substantially by the Democrats, where the litany of high-profile endorsements (Oprah, Bill Gates, Taylor Swift, the Cheneys, etc.) served very much to help paint them as the party of the status quo.

"Nothing will fundamentally change." - Joseph Robinette Biden
posted by Gadarene at 10:16 AM on December 11, 2024 [3 favorites]

He seems pretty right wing to me. I can see his twitter, he follows mostly right wing twitter dudes, has right wing opinions about ladies birthing babies (for japan) instead of immigration, RT of a Peter Thiel speech, Christianity's Decline has unleashed terrible new gods" (DEI of course), and that a health care corporation is the largest "by market cap?" in the US is part of anti-vax propaganda.

What are you all seeing that makes him anything other than right wing? That he's vaguely angry about corporate parasites? That's right wing too, depending on which one you are talking about, or at least not solely left-wing.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:32 AM on December 11, 2024 [3 favorites]

What are you all seeing that makes him anything other than right wing?

That he's not old enough for his frontal lobe to be done cooking.
posted by phunniemee at 10:37 AM on December 11, 2024 [12 favorites]

That he's vaguely angry about corporate parasites?

Not sure that killing the specific person he did or his highly specific statements that he did about that killing were “vague[] anger” but maybe we have a different definition of vague

Anyway, leave it to the worst/most gullible political minds out there to try to emphasize/prove that the most universally political popular figure in years, maybe decades, is right wing. Way to go!
posted by knobknosher at 10:53 AM on December 11, 2024 [3 favorites]

Seems to me that trying to categorize someone’s politics on the basis of their social media activity is a pretty dubious proposition. At best it represents only a portion of what’s in a person’s head at any given moment.
posted by nickmark at 10:54 AM on December 11, 2024 [5 favorites]

From Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day link above:

In fact, to hear his friends tell it, Mangione had a debilitating back injury and had basically fallen off the grid over the last six months — his most recent X post was in June. Which actually paints a much different different picture than the one we’re used to: A sort of reverse online radicalization. It is not so much that he was radicalized by what he was consuming online, as far as anyone has found, but by whatever went through his head during his time offline.

Interesting that Mangione went offline in June, the same month Lorien Health Services agreed to pay fines for Medicaid/Medicare fraud. Lorien is the source for about half of the Mangione family's immense wealth. The other half being residential golf course development.
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 10:59 AM on December 11, 2024 [5 favorites]

Which actually paints a much different different picture than the one we’re used to: A sort of reverse online radicalization

Who knew the plebes could ever have their political beliefs shaped by their material circumstances???? Pretty sure all opposition to unchecked legalistic capitalism is created by scary propaganda ???????
posted by knobknosher at 11:04 AM on December 11, 2024 [3 favorites]

Anyway, leave it to the worst/most gullible political minds out there to try to emphasize/prove that the most universally political popular figure in years, maybe decades, is right wing. Way to go!

The anger is 'vague' because the outcome of it is that no-one cares. Isn't that why everyone is cheering? Is that how you enact change? Is this killing going to change the fact that UHC is the 17th largest corporation by market cap, or improve US health care outcomes? He doesn't even mention any personal claim - no mention of his personal bills, injuries, or quality of care - it's only about the profit margins.

Seems to me that trying to categorize someone’s politics on the basis of their social media activity is a pretty dubious proposition.

Fair enough, but when people tell you who they are, you should maybe believe them?

If you all think that right wingers don't have a list of corporations they dislike - man you all are going to be in for a surprise the next few years. You may need to procure a fainting couch.

Reverse radicalization? Come on.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:06 AM on December 11, 2024 [1 favorite]

I did scroll his X feed for quite a bit early on and checked out people's distillations of who he followed. The selection reads to me like young and open-minded—not different from people on the left I know in that age range.

If anything, this is really just a great example of how the attempts to pipeline techy, open-minded young men into right-wing ideals work. They follow a lot of people who are "just asking questions" whose answers sound intriguing, authoritative, and "rational" and end up pointing toward right-wing ideals. That doesn't mean he was actually all the way down that rabbit hole, though. It means he was at an impressionable age and taking in a lot of info.

That would tie in with the anecdotes about his possibly being on back-pain forums and potentially making decisions about his treatment on the basis of things he saw there that he thought made sense. That can be a pipeline, too, to supposed cures that don't work, peddled by the witless to others who are at their wit's end. We don't know enough about what happened to know whether that's the case, either, but it would make sense. I feel like we've had discussions here on AskMe over the years about treatment ideas people keep sharing that are based on incomplete info at best (the first thing that comes to mind is the idea that everything wrong below the waist can be cured with yogurt and/or garlic, which just, no). We're not immune to it either. A lot of people are just trying their best to figure out how to lead less painful lives, and sometimes the available info falls short, even if we pore over everything we can find. "Do your own research" proponents don't help this tendency and have their own agendas.

Anyway, you've got my take on it already. As others have said, I don't think it's helpful to try to pigeonhole his beliefs like that on the basis of scant info. From a "what's next?" perspective, if we want to move beyond gawking to make something of this moment, it feels important to notice the ways he was really pretty middle-of-the-road.

I also don't know that we have evidence he actually wasn't online during the time he went dark. It sounds like he was unresponsive to online conversation and maybe wasn't posting, but that's not the same thing as not being online. Unless maybe he was doing that raw-dogging life trend! That also is possible!
posted by limeonaire at 11:09 AM on December 11, 2024 [11 favorites]

he also follows aoc, various non-political figures, etc.
posted by sagc at 11:10 AM on December 11, 2024 [3 favorites]

the accused killer is clearly attracting all manner of projections as to his character

some people in this space seem to want to disabuse us of any redeeming qualities he might have, that in itself is a projection of something

whoever types whatever about this person, maybe pause and think: what am I saying about me
posted by ginger.beef at 11:18 AM on December 11, 2024 [15 favorites]

Yeah, the description I've seen used is that he's a floating signifier.
posted by limeonaire at 11:19 AM on December 11, 2024 [8 favorites]

The anger is 'vague' because the outcome of it is that no-one cares. Isn't that why everyone is cheering? Is that how you enact change? Is this killing going to change the fact that UHC is the 17th largest corporation by market cap, or improve US health care outcomes? He doesn't even mention any personal claim - no mention of his personal bills, injuries, or quality of care - it's only about the profit margins.

Yet literally millions of people pretty much immediately understood the action both as an act of symbolism and as a practical, reasonable reaction to our material circumstances.

Absolutely nothing about it was vague. The man communicated his intent with the bullets, both figuratively and literally.

And none of this makes it any less dumb to attribute his incredibly popular actions to the right wing, FFS
posted by knobknosher at 11:37 AM on December 11, 2024 [15 favorites]

I'm not sure it matters what his politics are/might be. What he did, and the reasons he gave for doing it, is what makes this meaningful or not. For-profit healthcare is a blight on the U.S.; the executives don't give a shit about human life and continue to abuse Americans; he got his; the end.

Sounds good to me.
posted by tzikeh at 12:16 PM on December 11, 2024 [16 favorites]

okay but i really need to know whether he swears to uphold and support louis xvi
posted by mittens at 12:28 PM on December 11, 2024 [7 favorites]

In the roughly three decades since HIPAA became (a widely misunderstood) law, we've learned that being a member of polite society entails not asking questions about people's health--even obituaries are circumspect—commenting on their appearance and, in general, respecting people's bodily autonomy. People also absorbed that it was somehow untoward to talk about their own medical issues, including sharing their experiences interacting with the industrial medical complex, health insurance gatekeepers, local doctors and hospitals, etc. Consequently, people like Mangione consult internet forums and otherwise "do their research" by engaging with anonymous sources, including fellow sufferers who they hope can offer help, in lieu of how we did it in days gone by: collecting anecdotes and recommendations from people known to us, e.g., sharing experiences with local friends and family and maybe their extended circle.

Meanwhile, the drive to maximize profits in the name of shareholder value and meeting quarterly financial targets, coupled with litigiousness and an increasingly complex regulatory environment, increased the onerousness of the conditions associated with receiving health care and insurance services as well as the penalties for running afoul of them. Together, the expectation of silence plus the volume and opacity of the fine print contributed to a climate of shame around one's failure to navigate the health care system. Need a drug that isn't covered? That's on you for failing to anticipate it when you signed up. Appointment postponed until the new year? Time to pay an entire second deductable. Failed to realize that the anesthesiologist you met an hour before surgery wasn't in the network? Too bad, so sad. Or in my case, discovering that the out-of-state doctor that diagnosed my endocrine issue was technically part of a clinic, and so covered, but the people down the hall who operated on me were technically part of an affiliated out-of-network hospital, and so I received a bill for over $35k. And on and on.

My point is that the onslaught of stories about people's terrible experiences with the health insurance system represents pent-up steam that no longer has a release valve to alleviate the pressure. A lot of people, due to the culture of secrecy and shame around "failing" to navigate the health care and insurance labyrinths, have not realized how widespread these issues are: they thought it was only them. Or they blamed the wrong people--that awful Obamacare! that inefficient Medicare!-- instead of properly assigning blame to the greedy corporations and the elected officials that enable them.

I only wish this national conversation had happened in, say, October.
posted by carmicha at 12:46 PM on December 11, 2024 [22 favorites]

Unable to cosign anything in this r/prison post, but here it is.
posted by box at 1:25 PM on December 11, 2024 [3 favorites]

Appointment postponed until the new year? Time to pay an entire second deductible.

Oh hello, it's me! I realize I've already made like seven million comments here, but let me set aside my political points and dumb jokes for a second, and tell a personal story.

This has been a great year for me, insurance-wise. My kid was prescribed an insanely pricey medication, but a copay card was available that took the cost to zero--but the cost of the med counted toward our deductible. This is the first year where we've all been able to go to the doctor, get tests, etc., and experience our insurance actually paying for the appointments. We've never managed to reach our high deductible before. It has been wild to just be able to go to the doctor, or get a specialist referral, and it just be normal rather than something that sparks a lot of calculation and baleful looks at the credit card.

Except! One of the things I wanted to talk to my doc about, was some weird spells I've been having. When I described them, he was concerned that I'm having seizures. Not big obvious ones that would be, you know, super-easy to tell, but troubling nonetheless. He referred me to a specialist, and I was really relieved, because this has been kind of worrying me for several years.

Except that my appointment was scheduled for the week Hurricane Helene hit. The specialist's office had their power knocked out for a week. They had to reschedule...for next year. Early January, when the deductible odometer will reset.

And now I will have to pay full price for the specialist and any tests they want to run. And so I'm wondering if it's something I should put off. After all, the spells haven't killed me yet, they just make life weird and uncomfortable, in a way that is slowly getting worse. I'm going to keep the appointment, but that mental whiplash between "yay let's all go to the doctor" and "omg how much room do we have on the card" is so sharp and painful.

My politics around this were already formed. I think we should all get to go to the doctor for free; there's plenty of money to pay for it. So this isn't going to drive me to buy a 3D printer and new backpack or anything. But I think about how shocking this stuff must be to someone who has never really had to go through it before. You're young, beautiful and rich, and life is supposed to go a certain way for you. This kid has probably never had a bad experience with a doctor before this. It had to have been a revelation, adding to the millions of us--most of us not young, not beautiful, not rich--who have gone through similar shocks.
posted by mittens at 1:28 PM on December 11, 2024 [27 favorites]

Oh mittens, that sucks. Sorry to hear that you are having weird spells and also that you will have to pay for the specialist, etc. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:42 PM on December 11, 2024 [4 favorites]

This one internet subculture explains murder suspect Luigi Mangione’s odd politics (Emily Shugerman SF Standard)
posted by adrienneleigh at 3:11 PM on December 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

disavows “wokeism” and venerates Elon Musk

Heh, that one tweet just endlessly keeps getting misread, now by this reporter. I really did not read it that way.

Interesting otherwise if true!
posted by limeonaire at 3:18 PM on December 11, 2024

whoever types whatever about this person, maybe pause and think: what am I saying about me

I think the shooter is handsome and funny and a heck of a dancer
posted by mazola at 3:23 PM on December 11, 2024 [15 favorites]

Speaking of Taxi Driver, the screenwriter has spoken up about the shooting.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:42 PM on December 11, 2024 [1 favorite]

The one internet subculture:

“Rosenberg got her crash course in the subculture while living in a commune of TPOTers in Brooklyn, from which members launched an “alternative university” where they taught clowning, civics, and freestyle rap.”

I want to hear these freestyle raps, but I also never, ever, ever want to hear them.
posted by box at 5:00 PM on December 11, 2024 [10 favorites]

I want to see this clowning, but I also never, ever, ever want to see it.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:06 PM on December 11, 2024 [9 favorites]

Still, Rosenberg noted at least one other similarity between Mangione and the TPOTers: a penchant for overly long tweets.

“It’s a very verbal culture. People really love to have long-form discussions, state their opinions,” she said. “Really, just people who like to talk a lot.”

Present company excluded, I'm sure.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:20 PM on December 11, 2024 [4 favorites]

Even the defense lawyer is a character, amazing.
posted by Apocryphon at 6:36 PM on December 11, 2024 [3 favorites]

Honestly the defense lawyer just seems like a simple country lawyer to me. Thus far he's seemed to be on his game, though.
posted by corb at 7:26 PM on December 11, 2024 [5 favorites]

Almost all of you are too young to remember Senator Sam Ervin's mind blowing demonstration of just how powerful a simple country lawyer can be when he took down a President during the Senate Watergate hearings.

And I am too young to remember his role in the battle against Joseph McCarthy which is mentioned in Corb's link.
posted by jamjam at 7:45 PM on December 11, 2024 [6 favorites]

Every descriptive of TPOT that I see makes me hate everything about it more. From the eyerolly name to the pretentious self-image (radical centrism, 'this is a community, unlike every other grouping on twitter or other social media', thinking they're intellectual giants, everything) they just seem insufferable.
posted by Dysk at 10:51 PM on December 11, 2024 [6 favorites]

Folk music? [facebook video, some profanity but just a guitarist singing] by a modern balladier named Jesse Welles.

I'm from outside the US but our fundamentalist (a bunch of evangelical Dominionists & Catholic Intergalists, and a few QAnons) government is lining up to collapse our healthcare system so they can say it failed and then privatise it.

For good or ill violence is effective sometimes - especially against people who think they hold all the cards. Enough for The Atlantic to write Decivilization May Already Be Under Way [archive link] and go on about widespread violence when this was a surgical strike. And it seems to be working: Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield halts anesthesia payment policy after backlash [NBC]. Links shamelessly filched from Hacker News.

The song again on TikTok, literally the first time I've ever been there. Sure are a lot of appreciative comments.
posted by unearthed at 11:22 PM on December 11, 2024 [9 favorites]

Enough for The Atlantic to write Decivilization May Already Be Under Way [archive link] and go on about widespread violence when this was a surgical strike

If broader tolerance of violence by society is a problem, what about the decades of violence committed by insurance companies and their executives against patients? I would ask her why those acts of violence are considered acceptable by the journalist class, while the assassin's act remains unacceptable.

Complicity of mass media in legitimizing some acts of violence and demonizing others has helped lead society to hold the very grievances she argues against — and she is part of that industry. When will members of the press do any soul-searching for their own roles in this?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:59 AM on December 12, 2024 [21 favorites]

Imprisoned people at the jail where Luigi is being held tell reporters that he is being held in solitary, without a TV, and shout “Free Luigi”.
posted by corb at 5:59 AM on December 12, 2024 [15 favorites]

I appreciated the article making the point that, yes, conditions in any given jail in the US are pretty terrible. But Riker's is worse.
posted by hydropsyche at 7:09 AM on December 12, 2024 [5 favorites]

They're going to physically and mentally hurt him as much as they can. I fear for his mental health the most, as by the time trial rolls around (years from now, most likely), they can point to his deteriorated mental state as "proof" of how "deranged and depraved" this act was. Instead of a rational response to the state of our country.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:21 AM on December 12, 2024 [22 favorites]

And, of course, THAT won't be counted as violence.

Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube has a great video on violence, how it's conceptualized, and more important what is and isn't counted as violence.
posted by sotonohito at 8:20 AM on December 12, 2024 [11 favorites]

You cannot fix a violent society simply by eliminating the factors that made it deteriorate.

Well that's a relief. For a moment I thought we'd have to actually do something.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:57 AM on December 12, 2024 [6 favorites]

Something that occurs to me as I see conspiracy-debunking posts float around my periphery, is that regardless of any individual's guilt or innocence the police have absolutely framed guilty people before. OJ Simpson, rather famously.
posted by stet at 11:48 AM on December 12, 2024 [6 favorites]

In other billionaire related news, a British businessman in Denmark has been given a 12 year prison sentence after defrauding the tax authorities of DKK9bn (£996m). They've reclaimed most of it.
posted by biffa at 12:35 PM on December 12, 2024 [5 favorites]

I'm from outside the US but our fundamentalist (a bunch of evangelical Dominionists & Catholic Intergalists, and a few QAnons) government is lining up to collapse our healthcare system so they can say it failed and then privatise it.

Good point. Luigi M. is enthralled by RFK who is undertaking a subterfuge approach to US healthcare towards science doubt and holistic medicine. Luigi comes from a devout Catholic family of ten kids, "all raised to run the family business" according to his dad. It's relevant because his postings are marginalia for a religious idealism as cultural authority, especially his apparent pronatalism. He even stooped to lecture the Japanese, in English, on how to fix their culture to increase their birthrate, mostly shallow scoldings for evading traditions and bullet points for sexual diversions to avoid. It looks like he replaced his childhood dogma with a current broicism to avoid sounding medieval, but the old themes are preserved. Radically speaking, authoritarian idealism breaks two ways, one towards an imposed utopia, the other towards a reactionary traditionalism, depending on whether one is a beneficiary or a benefactor (he being the latter). Another reason not to claim this guy as spokesman is because he claims Ted K., who was a petty vandal in his cabin community, poisoning dogs so he could damage trucks and snowmobiles, trashing other cabins with an axe on the inside after breaking in. Ted's bombings were initiated because he was about to be caught and jailed and wanted to widen his appeal to anti-hero status instead of the neighborhood dog killer. It's only a circumstance that Luigi was kicked out of his book club and family chat group, until it coincides with his open admiration for a sociopath like Ted K.
posted by Brian B. at 1:30 PM on December 12, 2024 [3 favorites]

Another reason not to claim this guy as spokesman is because[...]

Okay, but for the hundredth time, so what?

The Right has wasted no time circulating bonkers conspiracy theories that the UnitedHealth CEO was murdered because he was going to testify against a prominent Democrat in an insider trading scandal. Obviously that's not even remotely true, but if we sit around tut-tutting about how Mangione wasn't pure enough for his act of revenge-murder to mean anything, those conspiracy theories are going to flood the zone with shit until the shocking, unprecedented murder of the CEO of a notorious health insurance company becomes just another ambiguously polarizing thing which happened like the Covid-19 pandemic or January 6th.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:15 PM on December 12, 2024 [13 favorites]

"The official narrative of how Luigi Mangione was apprehended doesn’t add up. Evidence suggests a deeper surveillance operation involving real-time facial recognition technology. Let’s delve into the inconsistencies and explore the implications."
posted by mittens at 4:14 PM on December 12, 2024

...so what?

Alice: "He's a right-wing nutjob."
Bob: "But they don't want him."
Alice: "So he'll change his politics?"
Bob: "No, but we can change ours."
posted by Brian B. at 4:28 PM on December 12, 2024

> RonButNotStupid: "Okay, but for the hundredth time, so what?"

Indeed. Perhaps we can apply the "impact > intent" framework to more than microagressions.
posted by mhum at 4:44 PM on December 12, 2024 [6 favorites]

"The official narrative of how Luigi Mangione was apprehended doesn’t add up. Evidence suggests a deeper surveillance operation involving real-time facial recognition technology. Let’s delve into the inconsistencies and explore the implications."

NYPD couldn't keep up with him as he made his way through various parts of Manhattan covered with layers of public surveillance to which they have immediate access. NYPD gets a budget of billions of dollars a year, while Pennsylvania State troopers get considerably less.

Even implying competency, where is PA getting the resources to suddenly monitor McDonalds camera footage state-wide?

If federal authorities were involved, which specific agencies and who gave them authorization? You'd think someone would talk, if only to get credit for the arrest.

That businesses are using facial recognition is not evidence of conspiracy, though it does show that they take advantage of a lack of privacy rights in the US.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:50 PM on December 12, 2024 [3 favorites]

> mittens: "Let’s delve into the inconsistencies and explore the implications.""

The main (and I think only?) "inconsistency" identified in that Twitter thread is in this tweet:

Considering Mangione’s efforts to conceal his identity, it’s improbable that a fast-food employee could identify him based solely on limited public images. We’re talking about a high-pressure, fast-paced environment where employees process hundreds of customers daily.

This person judges that it was "improbable" for an employee to have identified him and snitched. That's it. The rest of the thread reminds us that corporations do use facial recognition (which is def true) but then speculates -- as far as I can tell, solely on the basis of their own suspicions -- that the feds have direct live feeds to all their cameras and that was how Luigi was found.

One interesting phenomenon I've observed is that there appears to be certain kind of person who seems to be unable to distinguish observations of the real world with things that they've imagined in their own head. This Twitter user appears to have conjured this link to the feds having live feeds to every McDonald's camera in America out of their own imagination. While it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility for feds to gain access to corporate cameras, this user has given us nothing that is rooted outside of their own head to substantiate that this is what happened.
posted by mhum at 5:03 PM on December 12, 2024 [13 favorites]

In other billionaire related news, a British businessman in Denmark has been given a 12 year prison sentence after defrauding the tax authorities of DKK9bn (£996m). They've reclaimed most of it.

Sadly they haven't, they've recovered 3bn Kr. of 9bn Kr. so about a third.
posted by Dysk at 5:12 PM on December 12, 2024 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile, "Lakeland woman accused of threatening ‘evil’ insurance company: ‘Delay, deny, depose. You people are next’":

A Lakeland woman who police say was upset over a denied insurance claim was arrested after police say she made threats against Blue Cross Blue Shield.

According to the Lakeland Police Department, in a recorded call with Blue Cross Blue Shield, Briana Boston was heard saying, ‘Delay, deny, depose. You people are next.'

Police say she made that statement during a call about recent medical claims that were denied.

posted by mhum at 5:27 PM on December 12, 2024 [4 favorites]

Doubting that a McDonald’s worker could recognize him reads to me as doubting the skills, intelligence, and memory of a low-wage food service worker. Having been in those shoes, it’s sure as hell not improbable.
posted by Miko at 7:30 PM on December 12, 2024 [9 favorites]

The Lakeland story is wild - I read she could get 15 years in prison based on the charges, which are "threats to conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism." Her bond is set to 100k. She doesn't own a gun or have a criminal record. Pretty clearly just a person pissed off about health care costs not being covered, mouthing off. Way disproportionate to what she did.
posted by coffeecat at 7:58 PM on December 12, 2024 [3 favorites]

That's unkind, Miko. I understood it to mean that a McDonald's worker is too busy filling orders to be scanning faces for possible suspects. Particularly for a crime in another city, in another state.
posted by SPrintF at 7:59 PM on December 12, 2024 [1 favorite]

The thing to keep in mind re: McDonald's is that it was in a small town (it can only get *so* busy), and there were likely lots of other "spottings" of the shooter, most of which likely were entirely false. It's not that the employee was able to be sure, just "Oh, strange guy in a small town wearing a mask (and who does that here in 2024) with big eyebrows, maybe it's the guy who whacked the CEO." I saw some local news footage of a guy being interviewed saying he and his friends were there earlier, joking "hey, maybe that's the guy over there." Then they went to church.
posted by coffeecat at 8:04 PM on December 12, 2024 [4 favorites]

I thought that this was an NYT Pitchbot parody headline, but it's a real NYT opinion piece:

Brian Thompson, Not Luigi Mangione, Is the Real Working-Class Hero
posted by clawsoon at 8:09 PM on December 12, 2024 [16 favorites]

WTF lol they are fooling no one
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:19 PM on December 12, 2024 [6 favorites]

Joshua Hill posts on Bluesky with a photo of some hacked digital road signs in Seattle. The hacked signs read "ONE LESS CEO / MANY MORE TO GO"
posted by adrienneleigh at 8:22 PM on December 12, 2024 [14 favorites]

Other news:

-Luigi Mangione wasn't a United Health policy holder, per the company. So this was a symbolic act on his part - he picked them because of their size/practices.

-So many instances of graffiti or signage of the shell casings text from all over the country. An official road sign in Seattle flashed the message "One Less CEO many more to go" on Highway 99, presumably hacked. (all links go to Twitter)[on preview, adrienneleigh beat me to the Seattle highway bit :) ]

-The NYTimes had some new reporting on his recent history. His medical issues started in college - he had brain fog and some other conditions that he wondered were linked to Lyme disease from earlier in his life - doctors were unable to help. While it didn't stop him from getting a tech job, he quit in 2023 as he found it "boring" - the company he worked for "connects car buyers and sellers." It's less clear that the shooting had much to do with his current physical condition - when he fell out of touch with his family, he was rambling around Japan, seeming to have a good time in the mountains there. All evidence points to the back surgery going well, and him doing ok physically in recent months.
posted by coffeecat at 8:30 PM on December 12, 2024 [6 favorites]

"John Rockefeller, Not Franklin Roosevelt, Is the Real Working-Class Hero"
posted by clawsoon at 8:31 PM on December 12, 2024 [9 favorites]

Healthcare stocks fall as lawmakers push for bill to break up drug middlemen (Reuters)

Shares of companies owning pharmacy benefit managers fell on Wednesday after the introduction of a bipartisan bill that would force health insurers or drug middlemen to divest their pharmacy businesses.

CVS Health's (CVS.N), Caremark, Cigna's (CI.N), Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group's (UNH.N) Optum control the majority of pharmacy benefit management (PBMs) in the US, while their parent companies also operate health insurance businesses.

Shares of all three companies were down between 4.8% to 5.5% after the Wall Street Journal first reported news of the bill.

The bill, sponsored by U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, and Josh Hawley, a Republican, will force companies owning health insurers or pharmacy benefit managers to divest their businesses operating pharmacies within three years.
posted by creepygirl at 8:39 PM on December 12, 2024 [13 favorites]

A working class hero is something to be.
posted by Reverend John at 8:42 PM on December 12, 2024 [5 favorites]

"ONE LESS CEO / MANY MORE TO GO"

This is outrageous and must not be allowed to stand.

It's one fewer CEO, people
posted by Rumple at 9:06 PM on December 12, 2024 [24 favorites]

Nope.We're physically shrinking the CEOs. Just tiny little white men declaring "Well I just don't believe that!" in little squeeky voices.
posted by stet at 9:24 PM on December 12, 2024 [12 favorites]

I stand corrected.
posted by Rumple at 9:28 PM on December 12, 2024 [6 favorites]

in a perfect encapsulation of how the dude seemingly has fascinating and largely internally incoherent politics, it's fun to note how every single bullet point of his recommendations for Japan falls squarely under "not even wrong," with some fundamental misunderstanding or other on display in every one of them
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:19 AM on December 13, 2024 [5 favorites]

Others have shared their USA health insurance run-ins, here's mine own to illustrate how ridiculous things can get -

* I've spoken of my suddenly getting ovarian torsion when I was 26. I did have insurance; I was brought to an emergency room, diagnosed, and brought into emergency surgery to correct the situation. I've said all that. However - about a month later I also received a full bill for the services because the ER I went to was not in my insurance plan's network (I was at the home of a boyfriend when it happened and he brought me to the closest hospital). I was fortunately able to contest that based on "look, I was in extreme abdominal pain and they had to operate to SAVE MY LIFE, I didn't have the time to ask whether they took my insurance", but it was still COMPLETELY ridiculous, and if I hadn't had the time to fight back I'd still have been on the hook for the bill.

* When I broke my foot in 2012, I thought back on this incident and made sure that both my own doctor AND the hospital she sent me to were in-network. The hospital also took pains to make sure that the orthopedist they sent me to was in-network. So all was in order, I thought. But - nope, the company that made the boot cast they gave me was ITSELF out-of-network. Fortunately the doctor thought that was some bullshit and instead charged me the lower price that they charge to uninsured people - but I was still on the hook for a few hundred dollars.

* When I broke my knee in 2020, I made sure the ER I was brought to, the orthopedist I was connected with, and the hospital he operated on me in were all in-network. We also made sure the physical therapist I was sent to worked with my insurance. However - they had a finite amount of therapy sessions they would cover per year, which turned out to be only a fraction of what I actually needed. I exhausted my sessions for 2020, started over again in 2021 and paid out of pocket when I ran that out so I could keep going. Finally we gave up in 2022. My knee is....functional enough for what I need, but because I couldn't fully continue the physical therapy I still have some diminished strength in that knee.

....and among typical USA insurance horror stories, I'm LUCKY.

If Luigi Mangione hadn't done what he did to Brian Thompson, someone else would have done the same to someone else eventually.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:24 AM on December 13, 2024 [13 favorites]

While it didn't stop him from getting a tech job, he quit in 2023 as he found it "boring" - the company he worked for "connects car buyers and sellers."

Of course. A data engineer is highly paid but also completely unsexy, but stable and boring. It’s a perfect job for nerds in with kids, I can’t imagine liking that type of work when you’re a hot 20 year old.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:54 AM on December 13, 2024

> adrienneleigh: "The hacked signs read "ONE LESS CEO / MANY MORE TO GO""

I saw a local news segment about this incident calling it a "disturbing message" on TikTok. A decent chunk of the comments under that TikTok were some version of "what disturbing message?"
posted by mhum at 9:12 AM on December 13, 2024 [6 favorites]

Daniel Penny will be JD Vance’s guest at Army-Navy football game in Maryland
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:56 AM on December 13, 2024 [5 favorites]

Hot off the presses from ProPublica (2024/12/13), "UnitedHealth Is Strategically Limiting Access to Critical Treatment for Kids With Autism":

ProPublica has obtained what is effectively the company’s strategic playbook, developed by Optum, the division that manages mental health benefits for United. In internal reports, the company acknowledges that the therapy, called applied behavior analysis, is the “evidence-based gold standard treatment for those with medically necessary needs.” But the company’s costs have climbed as the number of children diagnosed with autism has ballooned; experts say greater awareness and improved screening have contributed to a fourfold increase in the past two decades — from 1 in 150 to 1 in 36.

So Optum is “pursuing market-specific action plans” to limit children’s access to the treatment, the reports said.

“Key opportunities” are outlined in bullets in the documents. While acknowledging some areas have “very long waitlists” for the therapy, the company said it aims to “prevent new providers from joining the network” and “terminate” existing ones, including “cost outliers.” If an insurer drops a provider from its network, patients may have to find a new clinician that accepts their insurance or pay up to tens of thousands of dollars a year out of pocket for the therapy. The company has calculated that, in some states, this reduction could impact more than two-fifths of its ABA therapy provider groups in network and up to 19% of its patients in therapy.

posted by mhum at 10:08 AM on December 13, 2024 [7 favorites]

I hate these fuckers.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:12 AM on December 13, 2024 [2 favorites]

“Key opportunities” are outlined in bullets in the documents.

Phrasing!
posted by mittens at 10:26 AM on December 13, 2024 [7 favorites]

ABA is bullshit, has been shown across multiple meta-analyses to minimally help and often harm autistic kids, and the ABA lobby is an extreme grift which is not remotely respected by experts in the field.

UnitedHealthcare's practices are also bullshit, but "critical treatment" ABA ain't.
posted by brook horse at 10:28 AM on December 13, 2024 [13 favorites]

Also, the ballooning costs are unique to ABA. I can't think of any other therapy for children that regularly bills FORTY HOURS A WEEK of treatment per child. I hate UHC and think the "we need to protect people from unnecessary care" is almost always just a shield to make more profits, but in this case yeah, ABA is grift and literally any other therapy for autistic children would not cost this much. But most kids are getting their diagnoses from ABA clinics nowadays, because to get a proper assessment means a huge waitlist, while an ABA clinic will do a quick and dirty one for you quickly and cheaply--if you say you're going to use them for treatment if they do.
posted by brook horse at 10:35 AM on December 13, 2024 [11 favorites]

Part of the problem:

Most Americans Say They Have Good Health Insurance, Polls Show
posted by girlmightlive at 11:02 AM on December 13, 2024 [1 favorite]

Alright, we got our first poll of Mangione's approval rating (twitter thread). Provides a breakdown by age, race/ethnicity, and whether or not people have had denied care in the past. Source is Center for Strategic Politics, the full report can be found on their website. They also ask about Brian Thompson's approval rating.

Key findings (nothing terribly surprising, but still interesting):

-Young Americans have a higher net approval of Mangione (-10%) than of Brian Thompson (-24%), UnitedHealthcare (-31%), and the health insurance industry as a whole (-34%), though they view all unfavorably.

-Young Americans were nearly four times as likely (31%) to view alleged killer Luigi Mangione favorably as Americans over 45 (8%).

-Those who have been denied care by their health insurance provider were over three times more likely (33%) to view Mangione favorably than those who have not (9%).

-Trump voters (18%) and Harris voters (21%) were similarly likely to view Mangione favorably, but Trump voters were significantly more likely to view him unfavorably (71%). Liberals (25%) were most likely to view him favorably and conservatives (14%) were least likely to.

-Men were over twice as likely (17%) as women (7%) to believe the killing of Thompson was justifiable.

-White Americans view Mangione by far the least favorably, with only 14% having a positive opinion of him, compared to 28% of Hispanic Americans and 31% of Black Americans.
posted by coffeecat at 11:21 AM on December 13, 2024 [8 favorites]

Most Americans Say They Have Good Health Insurance, Polls Show

The bigger problem is that the headline distorts the findings. 84% of healthy Americans rate their insurance as good or better. That number drops to 68% if you have health problems. That is, nothing turns you against your insurance faster than having to use it for something. And that's only the start...the article goes on to point out "nearly six in 10 insured Americans said they had encountered at least one problem using their coverage in the past year," "nearly three-quarters of Americans said they were very or somewhat worried about being able to afford unexpected medical bills or the cost of medical services," and in a rare display of bipartisanship, "just 15 percent of Republicans and 19 percent of Democrats said they were satisfied with the total cost of health care in the United States."

A criticism of Luigi's manifesto came across my timeline, which led me to a piece I'm grappling with unhappily now: Why conventional wisdom on health care is wrong (a primer), whose thesis is that American healthcare is expensive because we're a rich country where everything is expensive (and that our life expectancy is low because we're overweight, violent, and bad drivers, rather than because of the quality of our healthcare). I hesitated to even mention it because it feels like one of those arguments where some conservative economist pushes up his glasses to explain why everything's actually just peachy, really. But now I'm convinced there's a problem in the argument, and I gotta find it so I can feel vindicated.
posted by mittens at 11:24 AM on December 13, 2024 [4 favorites]

Yeah, a much more accurate description of that polling would be Healthy Americans think they have better health coverage than they actually do
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 11:34 AM on December 13, 2024 [15 favorites]

Also we’re boiled frogs. I think I have excellent coverage because they cover all of my doctors (at one hospital) and I only have to prior auth a few of my meds with a deductible under $100. The fact that their mental health network is garbage and that “specialty” meds have a $50 co-pay I consider to be the price for excellent medical appointment coverage.

This… should not be the definition of excellent healthcare.
posted by brook horse at 11:42 AM on December 13, 2024 [10 favorites]

Yeah, a much more accurate description of that polling would be Healthy Americans think they have better health coverage than they actually do

Some people, maybe a decent number of people, do have good insurance, though. And it's probably more true for people who are in a union, although this of course depends. This will need to be addressed as these conversations continue.

And I wouldn't call the headline distorted when even 68% of people in fair or poor health rate their insurance as good or better.

This polling is similar to another type of poll we always see, how Americans dislike Congress but like their own Congressperson (which is mentioned in the article). Seems to just add more to the idea that as much as we complain about the status quo we still are willing to live with it (not that we have much of a choice a lot of the time).
posted by girlmightlive at 11:46 AM on December 13, 2024 [1 favorite]

The KFF survey the NYT piece is based on is worth taking a look at. One of my own blind spots came up when looking at their methodology--it had not occurred to me that 49% of the respondents would be on Medicare or Medicaid. (I've been on both! I don't know why I read that whole piece thinking they were talking about private insurance alone!)

From the survey: The demographics of these insured populations differ, which is important context for understanding the findings in this report. For example, adults with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) are higher income and generally healthier, whereas Medicaid enrollees tend to be younger, more female, have lower incomes, and are more likely to describe their health as “fair” or “poor.”

Interestingly the numbers do change when you compare the different forms of insurance--if you're in fair or poor health, you're much more likely to rate Medicaid as excellent/very good/good than you are an employer provided health plan.

And yeah, this is a problem when it comes to change, because if a ton of your voters are healthy/wealthy enough not to hate their insurance, then single-payer is not going to be very interesting to them! (oh god, editing to add: this is the most depressing thing i've heard in a while, once you really think about it.)
posted by mittens at 12:11 PM on December 13, 2024 [8 favorites]

I sometimes wonder if some of my Metafilter comments have been enough to get me a file with the FBI. If so it probably says something like "too much of a bumbing, incompetent, overthinking procrastinator to worry about or even waste a confidential informant on entrapping, even if he ever did consider taking any concrete steps towards doing something illegal."

In that spirit, I'll just leave this here.
posted by Reverend John at 12:16 PM on December 13, 2024 [4 favorites]

I have good insurance today. Will I have it tomorrow? Maybe not!

I think a lot of people miss how much lasting trauma there is when it comes to health insurance. I remember watching my parents scrape together enough money to make COBRA payments. I also remember when COBRA ran out and my mom enrolled me in an eczema study and then asked the doctor to fill out my physical forms for school. Even if you were to wave a magic wand and somehow fix health insurance completely, those memories and the defensive cynicism they nurtured take a long time to fade.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:32 PM on December 13, 2024 [6 favorites]

I remember hearing the parent of an autistic child (KC Davis on TikTok) explain that while ABA can very often suck, it's the only therapy for autism a lot of insurance companies cover and so having that is better than having nothing for parents who can't afford to pay out of pocket for therapies. I don't know if that's totally accurate, but I just wanted to mention it.
posted by kitcat at 4:40 PM on December 13, 2024

Oh I forgot to say as well, I think she said that also, because ABA tends to be covered, therapists who have evolved their therapy beyond those really harmful parts of OG ABA may still use the term ABA - basically because it gets their clients covered.
posted by kitcat at 4:42 PM on December 13, 2024 [2 favorites]

whereas Medicaid enrollees tend to be younger, more female, have lower incomes, and are more likely to describe their health as “fair” or “poor.”

This is such a weird phrasing - "tend to... have lower incomes", "tend to be younger", "are more likely to describe their health as fair or poor" all fine. "Tend to be... more female" though?? That's such a weird nonsense, especially when any of the other phrasings used would be a better fit (e.g. "are more likely to be female").
posted by Dysk at 4:54 PM on December 13, 2024 [2 favorites]

Medicaid: Finally, Insurance For The Ladies
posted by mittens at 5:40 PM on December 13, 2024

But how lady are these ladies? Could they be more female?
posted by Dysk at 5:43 PM on December 13, 2024 [1 favorite]

maybe a little more female, as a treat
posted by mittens at 7:07 PM on December 13, 2024

Some people, maybe a decent number of people, do have good insurance, though. And it's probably more true for people who are in a union, although this of course depends.

I will be honest: one of the things that has been effectively used as a scare tactic is the idea that single payer is going to be worse than current employment health plans. That’s especially true because of all of the negative talk about “Cadillac plans” and how they are too generous.

I think we could get everyone more on board if there was a commitment to make the healthcare actually good - at the very least, better than VA care.
posted by corb at 7:57 PM on December 13, 2024 [5 favorites]

“Is it wrong to support Luigi Mangione?” [12:26]—Alice Cappelle, 13 December 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 3:54 AM on December 14, 2024

while ABA can very often suck, it's the only therapy for autism a lot of insurance companies cover and so having that is better than having nothing for parents who can't afford to pay out of pocket for therapies

This is because of the ABA lobby. It’s part of the grift. In my state, the government advisory board which counsels the health department on best practices on intervention and service delivery for autism is entirely made up of ABA providers, with the sole exception of one psychologist. She tried to get the government to require coverage of Early-Start Denver Model (which has a stronger evidence base than ABA and while it has a different theoretical model ABA providers could implement it with mostly transferable skills with a change in goal and direction) as well as ABA, and these ABA providers fought her tooth and fucking nail to prevent that. She got it done anyway. Now autistic children in Wisconsin have two options for therapy, and boy does the ABA lobby detest that woman for it.

They are one of the worst healthcare monopolies in the country and are forcefully and intentionally creating the conditions where families have no choice but to use them. I don’t blame families, I blame the people on that advisory board and others like them.
posted by brook horse at 6:19 AM on December 14, 2024 [6 favorites]

Some people, maybe a decent number of people, do have good insurance, though. And it's probably more true for people who are in a union, although this of course depends.


Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.

--Benny Hill.
posted by ocschwar at 7:11 AM on December 14, 2024 [12 favorites]

The analogy that keeps popping into my mind when thinking about all the Americans who want to defend our terrible healthcare system, is that of someone in an abusive relationship who keeps defending the abuser.

"Our healthcare system isn't all bad; it is sometimes the best in the world; it only bankrupts and lets people die when they deserve it; we couldn't possibly do any better!"

All the facts clearly show that this abusive for-profit system costs more money per capita than those found in every other "developed" country, yet delivers worse outcomes overall, nevertheless, there are those that want to defend it — and not just those who are materially profiting from this scam. As someone who studied in Germany for a couple years, and also lived/worked in Japan for a year, I know from experience that while neither of their healthcare systems are perfect, they sure as hell are an improvement. We have collectively been beat down and broken into submitting to this crappy state of affairs. It's exasperating and kind of sad.
posted by nikoniko at 2:36 PM on December 14, 2024 [15 favorites]

Apparently Luigi Mangione isn’t going to fight extradition to New York after all. That makes sense to me; wouldn’t he want a speedy trial to increase his chances of jury nullification? The more time between the current events and the eventual trial, the more time for his hero-of-the-people luster to fade away. Fun fact: his new NY attorney, Karen Friedman-Agnifilo, and the lawyer representing Sean “Diddy” Combs, Marc Agnifilo, are married to each other.
posted by carmicha at 8:03 PM on December 14, 2024 [3 favorites]

Didn't know Optum was a subsidiary of UHG.

Optum recently bought out my longtime provider (The Polyclinic). Ugh
posted by Windopaene at 8:12 PM on December 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

Fighting extradition bought time to get a top-notch NY lawyer, though - so well worth it.
posted by corb at 4:03 AM on December 15, 2024 [1 favorite]

I think he had all the time in the world to hire a great lawyer; many were likely vying for the position.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:40 AM on December 15, 2024

Having an active fantasy life, I spend a lot of time plotting jewel heists and assassinations. In the case of a heist, I've always planned for money laundering and where to live while I squander my ill-gotten gains. The usual.

It has never once occurred to me to plan on surviving an assassination. It's just a total down in a blaze of glory thing. He probably never expected to get away with it and was probably *in* the look-a-like contest trying to get arrested. "Look officer! I'm martyring myself over here! Trying to live on after my death as a symbol of hope in the face of oppressive odds here! Don't Katniss me, bro!"

I mean, isn't the best case scenario with something like this a chance to deliver your monologue in court? I think he spent days trying to figure out how to get arrested but couldn't make the police work easy enough. These are not smart people.
posted by stet at 8:15 AM on December 15, 2024 [5 favorites]

Not that I'm advocating it, but if you could get away with it, you might even do it again. You might even inspire some copy-cats. They might even think its an organization. And can you imagine 50 people a day? I said 50 PEOPLE A DAY! Walking up, murdering a predatory megacorp CEO and walking out? Friends, they may think its a movement...
posted by Reverend John at 8:26 AM on December 15, 2024 [6 favorites]

And all you gotta do to join...
posted by Reverend John at 8:36 AM on December 15, 2024 [3 favorites]

NewsNation's Alex Caprariello and Ashleigh Banfield spoke exclusively with prison inmates live through the fence at the State Correctional Institution Huntingdon in Pennsylvania
posted by stet at 6:17 PM on December 15, 2024 [1 favorite]

@shaunvids.bsky.social‬: "i'd have sex with luigi the shooter! i'd ride him all crazy etc" no you wouldn't. you'd hurt his back
posted by Wordshore at 10:58 PM on December 16, 2024 [6 favorites]

Luigi Mangione indicted in New York for murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO as terrorism
posted by cendawanita at 6:37 PM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]

Fuck Alvin Bragg
posted by knobknosher at 6:51 PM on December 17, 2024 [3 favorites]

The question of whether we move towards a more just and equitable healthcare system, or if our system goes the other way, taking extreme measures to protect elites, seems to be resolving towards the latter: terrorism charges are an unspoken but clear message to the public that has mostly lionized Mangione, as much as they are the gears of the judicial process grinding away.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:48 PM on December 17, 2024 [5 favorites]

At the end of the day, single payer healthcare or ANY healthcare changes that might actually benefit the American public is a lost cause. Deeply ingrained in the American psyche (as well as its history) is horror at the idea that one can receive aid with "deserving" it. The general American public would never go for an healthcare system that would allow an equal playing field. You have to prove you deserve help and even if you do, they will find a way to humiliate you for needing it.
posted by Kitteh at 6:23 AM on December 18, 2024 [5 favorites]

the public that has mostly lionized Mangione

61% of respondents said they have a strong or somewhat negative perception of Mangione, while just 18% said they have a strong or somewhat positive perception.
posted by box at 6:32 AM on December 18, 2024 [2 favorites]

61% percent of respondents see what you're doing there, officer. 18% just want to clear this up so we can all go home.
posted by stet at 10:50 AM on December 18, 2024 [2 favorites]

Ah yes, let's gaslight ourselves about polling of public opinion. Worked out so nicely the last few elections.
posted by ocschwar at 10:57 AM on December 18, 2024 [4 favorites]

It's really worth reading the poll article: there are big divides depending on age, race, and past experiences with medical insurance.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:04 PM on December 18, 2024 [5 favorites]

I think those numbers need some context. Polling at 18% "strongly or somewhat positive perception of him" seems really high for a person credibly accused of murder. That percentage works out to about two jurors on a 12 person jury.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 12:07 PM on December 18, 2024 [6 favorites]

True, but if you're building a guillotine, mount it on casters because you probably won't get a large crowd to come and just carry it for you.
posted by ocschwar at 1:54 PM on December 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

More details of the poll were posted earlier in the thread. 73% said the killing was not justified compared to 12% justified.
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 1:56 PM on December 18, 2024

sorry, no, not terrorism. "terrorism" has always been a propaganda term, but at least there's often some literal content to it when it's being used to describe acts that warrant condemnation on more specific, better-defined bases (e.g. because they're also war crimes or factually + morally equivalent to war crimes, there are innocent victims, etc.).

total ossification of the political system, "managed democracy", political dysfunction above a certain level, etc. are also violent outcomes for society, and enforcing double standards that people are easily able to recognise but powerless to resist is also a form of violence, albeit at a less obvious level. it's not like nobody tried fixing the healthcare clusterfuck through the proper channels.

what differentiates mangione from more effective users of political violence is not just organisation, scale, resources, etc. his act is also distinguished by an innocent noncombatant casualty rate of 0%. even though seemingly hamstrung by some nutty incoherent underlying ideas, this guy was able to correctly identify a real threat to society, a nontrivial player in an intolerable situation that's withstood decades of institutional resistance to change, and try to put some energy into the system in the hope of overcoming that inertia, without harming any innocent victims.

so it isn't terrorism because i'm not terrified and no normal person has any reason to be terrified by that instance of political violence. only a vanishingly small group of people are ultimately responsible for the intolerable situation mangione sought to protest. anyone throwing around the t-word is just identifying with, or carrying water for, the very small group of people with cause to feel ``terrorised'' by this murder. which, obviously, is what cops and prosecutors are for, but like at least make it less obvious?
posted by busted_crayons at 2:36 PM on December 18, 2024 [13 favorites]

sorry, no, not terrorism.

It's pretty textbook terrorism - political violence intended to use fear to make people adjust their policy or behaviour.

so it isn't terrorism because i'm not terrified and no normal person has any reason to be terrified

This doesn't make it not terrorism, it just makes you not the target. It's terrorism directed at healthcare execs. If you're not a healthcare exec, of course you're not scared.

If terrorism is to have any definition that isn't just "we want to condemn this" (and as someone with a background in critical security studies, I absolutely am not about conceding the term as a pure political tool with no definition) then Mangione's actions 100% fit.

It's just justified terrorism.
posted by Dysk at 9:12 PM on December 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

I think it fits the definition of terrorism for exactlybthe reaons Dysk articulated better than I could, but I also think making terrorism the charge will make it harder to get a conviction. I think jury nullification is a longshot, but I could imagine a jury being sqeamish about convicting on a charge that serious. A bunch of people who think "murder is wrong but I sort of understand it." Would convict on second degrree murder because rule of law and all that. But asking them tonconvictbon a terrorism charge if they have any sympathy at all would be much harder, I think.

This has been the opinion of a non-lawyer who has never sat on a jury nor even watched a full trial. So I'm not claiming any expertise, but that would be my impression of how jurors might feel.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:07 PM on December 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

Probably have to be careful throwing the t-word around outside of legal usage. For example, imagine calling jilted lovers terrorists for seeking vengeance for infidelity, only because that would make the indiscriminate class of relationship cheaters in the greater public (of which there are seriously many out in the real world) more scared of being the next victims. Just because you're now scared doesn't automatically mean the person coming for you is a terrorist. The first-degree charge is probably only used here as a legal mechanism, so that NYC prosecutors can get as much leverage as possible over the defendant through the process towards a plea deal.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:27 AM on December 19, 2024 [2 favorites]

> It's really worth reading the poll article: there are big divides depending on age, race, and past experiences with medical insurance.

Also they polled wokeness (33% Woke, 47% Not Woke).
posted by lucidium at 3:18 AM on December 19, 2024

political violence intended to use fear to make people adjust their policy or behaviour.

i dunno: on one hand, we agree that the only people who need fear a violent act like mangione's are healthcare executives. on the other hand, the people in a position to adjust policy or behaviour are not actually healthcare executives, since healthcare executives are almost definitionally incapable of overhauling the same system it's their job to run, and mangione and everyone else knows this. it's not like terrified insurance executives are suddenly going to demand comprehensive public healthcare in response to this, and surely mangione knows this.

it seems to me more like the goal is to heighten the sense of urgency around the healthcare problem in the minds of the public, give voice to widespread frustration with inaction on the problem, etc. with the stretch goal being some intervention from outside the private health care/insurance industry (say, from the government). so the fear itself isn't the intended lever.

isn't that fundamentally different from political violence that, say, makes the general public fearful, so that they then demand some change from government?

it seems to me like the definition you used is actually not the typical mechanism of action for non-state political violence, which seems to me like it's more about either public attention (in the case of propaganda of the deed incidents, which seems a better term than ``terrorism'' in this case) or about imposing intolerable concrete costs (in the case of actual organised political violence that's often also called terrorism but which seems pretty categorically distinct from this type of incident) than about fear.

but all of this seems less important to me than the feeling that this particular ship:

If terrorism is to have any definition that isn't just "we want to condemn this"

has well and truly sailed. i guess i don't really see the importance of carving out a proper non-propaganda meaning for that particular word when more neutrally descriptive ones are available?
posted by busted_crayons at 3:46 AM on December 19, 2024 [1 favorite]

that this particular ship:

If terrorism is to have any definition that isn't just "we want to condemn this"

has well and truly sailed

I simply do not agree - the definition is only an uncontested emotional one insofar as we stop contesting it.

isn't that fundamentally different from political violence that, say, makes the general public fearful, so that they then demand some change from government?

Not hugely to me? I think the fact that I think healthcare executives can effect meaningful change directly by virtue of their position, if not on the structure of the whole system itself, then in the conduct of their part of it, it's part of making the difference. Much like terrorism against a general populace only works when the populace is on some way in a position to effect change through pressuring governments, you apply terror to the group you think has the power to lean on the institutions who can bring about the changes you seek, or can effect it directly. Much like e.g. the guy who murdered Jo Cox for being anti-Brexit was a terrorist targeting MPs rather than the general public.
posted by Dysk at 3:55 AM on December 19, 2024 [1 favorite]

(And my background to this is academic security studies, and academic traditions are not generally in the habit of abandoning useful terms of art if they acquire a different lay meaning. Added to that is the political dimension of the securitisation of terrorism as a topic, and the political power allowing a less neutral definition to exist uncontested allows.)
posted by Dysk at 3:59 AM on December 19, 2024 [2 favorites]

We actually have pretty standard definitions of terrorism. The GTD has 3 criteria that get increasingly restrictive. There's some disagreement over whether nonstate violence against state actors should be considered terrorism, but that usually only matters for particular cases and what you're doing with the defintion.

Honestly there's no meaningful definition of terrorism, lay or technical, that would exclude the targeted assassination of a major public figure that is not personal. If your definition of terrorism excludes this act but, say, includes the assassination of a mayor, I don't know what use it is.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:16 AM on December 19, 2024 [1 favorite]

Of course he would: ‘The human side prevailed. And I don’t condemn him for that.’ — Putin on Biden’s decision to pardon his son
posted by cendawanita at 8:54 AM on December 19, 2024 [1 favorite]

It's pretty textbook terrorism - political violence intended to use fear to make people adjust their policy or behaviour.

So in law, definitions matter. It's not just political violence to make people adjust their actions - if that were the case, then a number of other cases would be terroristic. It specifically requires certain elements: in this case, that:

the victim was killed in furtherance of an act of terrorism, as defined in paragraph (b) of subdivision one of section 490.05 of this chapter;

which is to:
intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii)influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii)affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping;

My bet is this is going to fail and is just designed to have something for the nullification folks to shoot down: it's not attempting to coerce or intimidate a population - CEOS are not a population. And healthcare companies are not units of government.
posted by corb at 10:11 AM on December 19, 2024 [5 favorites]

So, I could be wrong here, but what I read was that because of how the ACA is set up, the prosecution could make the the case that health insurance is a unit of government. I agree though it seems a risky strategy, especially since healthcare CEOs aren't a population.
posted by coffeecat at 10:26 AM on December 19, 2024 [1 favorite]

Just in case anyone needs a reminder, the legal use and definitions of what constitute terrorist acts were broadly and vaguely expanded after 9/11/01 thanks to the Patriot Act. Just saying.
posted by nikoniko at 11:25 AM on December 19, 2024 [2 favorites]

Apparently the indictment claims all three definitions. Brian Thompson was also in charge of UnitedHealthcare's Medicare and Medicaid lines of business which work closely with government entities, but health insurance companies like UHC harbor no illusion that they're a unit of government -- the government is very much their customer. So I am sure Bragg is making a more convoluted argument.

Mangione arrived at a lower Manhattan heliport earlier today and this situation is following an entirely different playbook:

When Luigi Mangione arrived at a Manhattan heliport Wednesday afternoon, surrounded by dozens of heavily armed law enforcement officers and even the mayor of New York, it marked a substantial departure from how federal suspects are normally processed.

Mangione’s very public escort from the helicopter platform jutting out into the East River from Lower Manhattan was in stark contrast to federal authorities’ usual reluctance to engage in “perp walks” that can draw a media circus.

According to CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Pérez, officials usually “go to extraordinary lengths to avoid perp walks because they are considered prejudicial.”

The spectacle of being surrounded by officers with bulletproof vests and automatic weapons drawn may be a reflection of Mangione’s own unique form of notoriety.

“The security around Mangione today is because of what they’ve been seeing in terms of the public support for him and their security worries about somebody not trying to attack him, but to try and free him from law enforcement,” said CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller. [emphasis mine]

posted by mochapickle at 11:27 AM on December 19, 2024 [5 favorites]

automatic weapons drawn

DRAWN? WTF?? Can they just draw their weapons in the absence of any imminent threat?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:41 AM on December 19, 2024

(Yes, sorry to sound naive, I know cops have killed many people in the absence of any imminent threat, including by shooting them, but I thought they had to pretend there was a threat. What threat are they pretending to perceive here?)
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:42 AM on December 19, 2024 [1 favorite]

DRAWN? WTF?? Can they just draw their weapons in the absence of any imminent threat?

The photo I saw was that they were rifles... like not hunting rifles, but not what I think of when I think of an AR style thing? I dunno, not a gun person, but they were NOT pistols.
posted by Snowishberlin at 11:56 AM on December 19, 2024 [1 favorite]

They are out here perp-walking Mangione like it was NY Fashion Week

If they wanted to make him less of a folk hero, they might have eased up on the Joker photo op
posted by Kitteh at 12:12 PM on December 19, 2024 [5 favorites]

They think it will scare us. 😱
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:18 PM on December 19, 2024 [4 favorites]

Why was the mayor of new york at the perp walk? Shouldn't his bail prevent him from associating with criminals like that? Not a lawyer.
posted by stet at 12:40 PM on December 19, 2024 [6 favorites]

Why was the mayor of new york at the perp walk?

Practice.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:50 PM on December 19, 2024 [13 favorites]

Anyway, by the same reductionist logic used to pin terrorism charges on Mangione, we might as well point out that health insurance companies are run by terrorists, insofar as they use calculated violence and murder — even if sanctioned — to coerce the public.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:08 PM on December 19, 2024 [7 favorites]

So in law, definitions matter.

Of course, I should have made it clear that I was specifically not talking about the legal definition in the US or anywhere else - I'm not interested in the question of what actually constitutes terrorism than what some lawmakers decided one time. It's a term that has a life from before it became a legal charge.
posted by Dysk at 2:13 PM on December 19, 2024 [1 favorite]

...allowing a less neutral definition to exist uncontested allows

i agree that the use of the word "terrorism" should be contested --- so much so that i think it should be contested categorically, i.e. we should object to all uses of the term (in the lay and legal contexts, if not the academic one, about which I don't know enough to have an opinion), especially by the state when the state is using the term in a calculated way to justify political repression, which is the most common non-academic use of the term with which i am familiar.

i do not see that it's a good idea in political practice to concede the existence of an unambiguously-definable category of political violence whose definition (1) has any resemblance to the usual lay and/or legal ones used in the context of whatever "counterterrorism" is and (2) is agnostic on the specific political goals, power differentials, etc. involved in a specific instance of political violence.

the reason i think it's bad to concede that point is that the purported existence of such a definition grants (in practice even if not in principle) legitimacy to states' proven tendency to de-politicise genuine conflict and transform it into a notionally "apolitical" criminal legal issue. like even if one concedes the existence of a useful category of "terrorism" at the theoretical level, it feels to me like insisting on it is sort of unintentionally, in practice, taking e.g. margaret thatcher's side against the hunger strikers fighting for political prisoner status.

i don't disagree that there might be some useful neutral definition, but the claim of neutrality is itself also very open to weaponisation. the state always positions itself as the enforcer of "neutral" or "apolitical" legal principles. and always applies the notionally neutral definitions according to its own goals and preferences, i.e. in a highly motivated way. doesn't that put the theoretical utility of a "neutral" definition in tension with the moral reality that one shouldn't write the police state's arguments for them, even unintentionally?

and AFAIK (and maybe I am wrong here?) the term "terrorism" had even sort of fallen out of favour until the 70s/80s when it became convenient as a way to attack the legitimacy of a few specific national liberation movements --- yeah especially that one; not that one or even that one, obviously that that one! --- some parts of which had stepped up armed struggle.

actual question: is there any history of the word "terrorism" being used routinely in the sort of neutral way you're describing?

if not, then why not just use a less loaded term for theoretical purposes, and then in the political arena, advocate for eliminating the term entirely, rather than try to rehabilitate a word that's got so much pedigree as a repressive weapon?

(i also still don't agree that the "target audience" for mangione, unless he's confused, was healthcare executives. the message he's conveying is more like "hey, someone with power to rein in that industry: do it or we're gonna do it messily.". the audience for the message is not the same as the set of people supposedly at risk of being shot in this context. so the intended mechanism of action doesn't seem like fear. that seems like a major difference to me, but also a less important point than the other one.)
posted by busted_crayons at 4:20 PM on December 19, 2024 [2 favorites]

the reason i think it's bad to concede that point is that the purported existence of such a definition grants (in practice even if not in principle) legitimacy to states' proven tendency to de-politicise genuine conflict and transform it into a notionally "apolitical" criminal legal issue.

Again, a lot of these ideas predate the use of "terrorism" as a legal term. I think it's a bullshit charge that should not exist: terrorism is political violence, and we already have laws that deal with violence.

actual question: is there any history of the word "terrorism" being used routinely in the sort of neutral way you're describing?

Pretty much the entire field of security studies? A lot of political science and international relations theory? Going back to the 70s at least.

the message he's conveying is more like "hey, someone with power to rein in that industry: do it or we're gonna do it messily."

This sounds pretty much like a description of e.g. the right wing terrorist that murdered Jo Cox. Take up this particular issue, with the implicit threat of more violence if you don't. Terrorism.

if not, then why not just use a less loaded term for theoretical purposes, and then in the political arena, advocate for eliminating the term entirely, rather than try to rehabilitate a word that's got so much pedigree as a repressive weapon?

Because the term has pedigree well beyond and before its use as a repressive weapon, and there isn't really a better term for describing the particular nature and mechanism of certain kinds of politically motivated violence. (State terrorism is a thing too, did I mention that? Israel is an obvious example, but arguably its origins are Dresden. Again, descriptive term, not value judgement.)
posted by Dysk at 9:39 PM on December 19, 2024 [4 favorites]

(The Bush 2 administration made insurgency a dirty word in a lot of contexts, but it is also still routinely used in military science and international relations theory because it too is a useful term with a pre-existing history and tradition of use with a neutral definition. There's an entire theory of how governments use the term "security" or "national security" to remove ideas from political debate altogether - Wæver's theory of securitisation - and it is still a term that has a meaningful definition and use, and so it is still used even by most proponents of Wæver, just differently to most governments. You do not win anything by letting the other side determine the content of words, whether technical or emotional.)
posted by Dysk at 9:56 PM on December 19, 2024 [4 favorites]

The Canonization of St. Luigi

(r/AccidentalRenaissanse is on it)
posted by 1970s Antihero at 2:59 PM on December 20, 2024 [8 favorites]

Quote Origin: History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:31 PM on December 20, 2024

Anyway, one'd think right-wing Americans would have polled higher on a muscular, white Jesus running around with a gun, just as the good Lord intended (and the US Constitution).
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:34 PM on December 20, 2024

My main issue was not the way the word is being used but the fact that an allegedly progressive prosecutor is putting a person with possible mental health issues who doesn’t seem like a threat to pretty much anyone in line for the death penalty in order to please people who already hate him and will never be pleased. Bullshit
posted by knobknosher at 4:53 PM on December 20, 2024 [7 favorites]

The Canonization of St. Luigi

Wait, the NYPD released those photos? I was 100% assuming without even thinking about it that they were taken by somebody who wanted to make him look iconic.

Like... look at the perfect use of a shallow depth of field here, where everybody except him is slightly out of focus. Look at the way his turned head interacts with the light. And you hardly need to mention the colour composition; even an art idiot like me can image what an abstract artist could do with a streak of orange in a grey-black mass to evoke this photo. The photographer knew what they were doing, and the NYPD press department didn't.
posted by clawsoon at 5:37 AM on December 21, 2024 [19 favorites]

Sideways US flag in black and white, streak of flame up the central stripe, t-shirts coming soon.
posted by lucidium at 5:07 PM on December 21, 2024 [2 favorites]

So, now that his federal charges make him liable to get the needle, Biden has a month to do something hilarious.
posted by ocschwar at 5:46 AM on December 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

A comment in 1970s Antihero's link: “And, lo, the rich sought to demonize him, but instead they canonized him. Thus he was reborn, Saint Luigi Mangione, Patron Saint of Eat the Rich”.

I suppose VA privatization would make the Luigi Mangione saga even more interesting:
As Trump names Rep. Doug Collins R-GA as VA pick, firing and privatization come back into the spotlight
Project 2025 Will Spell the End of Veterans’ VA Health Care
posted by jeffburdges at 6:11 AM on December 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

Reportedly the pretrial judge in the case is married to a former healthcare executive.
posted by autopilot at 1:50 AM on December 24 [3 favorites]

I think its fascinating how the rich and powerful appear to be so completely oblivious to the naked way they're displaying the double standard.

People get murdered all the time, and mostly the police really do at least try to resolve those murders. But we saw nothing like the response that began with the Thompson murder. The entire machinery of the state rolled into action, the state and federal government are arguing over who gets to try him first, there has been wall to wall media coverage, and the police are escorting him around in numbers you'd expect for a supervillain not just a garden variety murderer.

We all know why: because someone important was killed. But I swear it's not so much that they know they're putting on a massive show of force because someone like them, someone REAL, was killed but that they genuinely don't notice that what they're doing here is so radically different from how they treat other murders.

We're just NPC's. Background characters. When one of us gets murdered it's a brief flicker of a mention on the news and to them that's appropriate and the right level of response for someone who, ultimately, is disposable and they don't care about. But now a person they meet at cocktail parties, a person of means, a person who matters, a REAL person, has been murdered so of course the media goes into overdrive. All those other murders were just background noise, not anything important about real people. They see the response this is getting as entirely appropriate because to them this is the only murder that's happened in the past few years.
posted by sotonohito at 4:24 PM on December 24 [17 favorites]

sotonohito, that makes me think of a line that Josh Johnson used in his extended comment on all this, about the media's reaction to the widespread positive response to the assassination:

"I think that for CEOs that was a terrifying moment because it was the first time that they saw that we see them the way they see us."

To put it a different way, if they don't see us as people, why should we see them as people? And that's terrifying if it's the first time you're on the receiving end of it.
posted by clawsoon at 4:43 PM on December 24 [12 favorites]

Wow, clawsoon, that Josh Johnson set is something else. It’s long but he makes so many great points and has so many great lines, it’s worth listening to the whole thing. Thanks for linking to that.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 7:30 PM on December 25 [1 favorite]

Possibly warrants its own post given this one will close soon, but I spotted this via a jwz post on the Fediverse - the linked Newsweek article 'Most Wanted CEO' Game Launched by Socialist Company. It looks like the media, tech-companies and police have circled the wagons to protect the most endangered minorities (CEO's) and are trying to silence him - someone has posted the operator of Comrade Workwear tiktok video response to the situation on YT.

Its amusing that 'Cards against humanity' went gangbusters but an equivalent 'Cards for humanity' (by knowing your CEO) is being silenced.
posted by phigmov at 3:49 PM on January 1 [3 favorites]

Impressive how quiet they've kept that one, so yes some streisand effect seems warranted. It'd rock if he puts the cards up for torrenting.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:45 PM on January 1 [1 favorite]