UHC CEO Gunned Down in Midtown Manhattan

[Anonymous]

A lot of speculation about his back and surgery. No one knows. We do know he is able to stand fully upright, run, rock climb, ride a bike, sit on grayhound buses for long periods of time, and sleep in a terrible hostel bed with seemingly little problem.

Yeah, he didn’t have a limp or other apparent mobility issue on the video. If he’d had a distinctive gait, it would have helped the police catch him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In case you are one of those who are morally confused:

Good guy: Daniel Penny
Bad Guy: Luigi Mangione

Disagree. They’re simply divergent species of good guy.

Penny protected his fellow citizens on a micro level. Mangione did so on a macro level. Both saw something that needed doing, and stepped up.

Hard disagree. Penny didn't plan to kill anyone. In fact even in the moment I don't believe he was trying to kill Neely -- I think he used "excessive force" due to adrenaline and the intensity of the moment.

Mangione planned and executed an assassination. Thompson was a really terrible person but that's still murder with prior intent.

What if Mangione had taken his Ivy League degrees, money from his family, and passion regarding a broken healthcare system (including coming from a family that profited off that system) and become an advocate for changing the system? I think it would be as effective as what he's done but without murdering someone on a city street on a Tuesday morning.

If you read what he purportedly wrote on Substack, which someone linked to pages back, he said nonviolence was essentially complicity with the status quo. While many of us don’t agree, frustration is simmering while politicians bicker.

The substack link was taken down but I saw a video of a friend purportedly reading from it. It dwelt on his mother’s pain. I wonder if that is the version that someone suspected was AI generated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In case you are one of those who are morally confused:

Good guy: Daniel Penny
Bad Guy: Luigi Mangione

+1

There are lots of seriously twisted and perverted people out there. So much justification over an assassination. There are people comparing this to what the founding fathers did for political change and text pretzel logic to reach those conclusions.

I think there's a LOT of righteous anger in this country towards the insurance industry. Righteous.

Sure, some people try to game the system. Those individuals pale in comparison to how the insurance industry is gaming the system.

If you can't understand these simple facts, neither I nor anyone else can help you.

So far as the vast majority of people are concerned, the murder of a corrupt, crooked member of this perverted insurance scam industry was a *shrug* event.

You must work in the insurance industry if you can't appreciate the frustration and anger the average America feels.

I’m surprised you find this hard to grasp. Just like I support the first amendment rights even of people whose views are abhorrent to me, I support the right not to get shot in the back even for those whose business practices are abhorrent to me.

I am someone with personal experience with insurance misery so if you are thinking everyone who doesn’t think this disturbed kid is a hero is an insurance shill you are absolutely mistaken.

This.

This. I am literally in the middle of fighting my insurance company over an emergency room bill as we speak, and I still don't think anything good will come of some rogue shooter murdering a health insurance exec on his way to breakfast.

[Anonymous]

Tim Walz was the murdered CEO’s personal friend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In case you are one of those who are morally confused:

Good guy: Daniel Penny
Bad Guy: Luigi Mangione

+1

There are lots of seriously twisted and perverted people out there. So much justification over an assassination. There are people comparing this to what the founding fathers did for political change and text pretzel logic to reach those conclusions.

I think there's a LOT of righteous anger in this country towards the insurance industry. Righteous.

Sure, some people try to game the system. Those individuals pale in comparison to how the insurance industry is gaming the system.

If you can't understand these simple facts, neither I nor anyone else can help you.

So far as the vast majority of people are concerned, the murder of a corrupt, crooked member of this perverted insurance scam industry was a *shrug* event.

You must work in the insurance industry if you can't appreciate the frustration and anger the average America feels.

I don’t work for the insurance industry and I have had claims denied by insurance companies. I understand there is a lot of frustration, but frustration does not make murder acceptable. I bet you yourself feel frustration about many things. I bet you feel frustrations over things like politics, but you’re not going to go out and assassinate a politician, a president or a CEO. Just because you’re frustrated does not mean murder is acceptable.

If you’re advocating for people assassinating people they’re frustrated with well then I can’t help you understand how wrong it is.

What Luigi did wasn’t heroic. In fact, he was a coward. He shot the man in the back. He didn’t even have the righteous indignation or guts to say something to his face.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the two big contributors here are going to turn out to be weed (I bet he already used a lot in his frat in college, then it got worse with the back pain, and I’m sure there was free flowing weed in his commune in Hawaii) and playing first person shooter games. Weed absolutely precipitates psychotic illness in kids this age (see here for example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33617756/). And growing up playing a lot of shooter games (it said several places that he was into them and at one point his goal was to develop his own) inured him to real life repercussions of shooting someone.

Yes, maybe to the weed, no to the video games. You probably don’t have college kids. They are frustrated with this country. People aren’t ready to kill, but there was so much attention on him because the environment is sh-t, there are people being needlessly killed across the globe, mental health isn’t funded (see UHC on this), and their quality of life will be worse than their parents (GenX). I’ve heard several kids say they don’t want to “bring kids into this world.” They didn’t want to vote (“feels pointless, it’s all theater”). Everything is so freaking expensive. We have a lot of problems in society that aren’t being addressed by either party because they’re so entrenched on drawing party lines. The millennials are about to have the biggest wealth transfer in history. GenZ is already, and knows they soon, bear the brunt of all of this.

On a micro level, this kid seemed to have a better quality of life than his parents. He lived in Hawaii, working remotely, surfing, and hanging with friends in this co-working/co-living community. He had the benefit of their wealth, no student debt despite a very expensive education. I don't really feel you can blame this on a generational frustration with income inequality or lack of opportunity because he is one of the lucky ones from his generation. Other Gen Zers definitely feel that way and rightfully so, but I don't see why he would.

I think this was more a case of someone with fragile mental health being radicalized online after a few IRL setbacks. He didn't lack for healthcare (had access to good care and the funds to pay for it), he wasn't struggling to buy a home (his parents bought him one), wasn't struggling finding stable work in the "gig economy" (had a good job in a solid field thanks to an expensive BS and MS from Penn, also paid for by his parents). He was very, very fortunate. Yet he became a killer. I think it was just buying into the online rage machine and perhaps being too disconnected from family, combined with underlying and untreated mental illness.

This will sound callous and I don't mean it that way because I feel for Thompson's family, but at least he just killed one guy. He'll go to prison for most of the rest of his life. Situations like this are often much, much worse.

He was born lucky so he shouldn’t have cared about his fellow Americans and the unfair system we live in? I’m not for what he did but the whole “he was fine, why would he care!?” Is such a toxic dcum attitude. Buddha was a prince.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tim Walz was the murdered CEO’s personal friend.

Not good company to keep.

Well, maybe they liked discussing their past drunk driving escapades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone blaming the health insurance companies and not the hospitals and their ridiculous charges? Why not blame the doctors who are like “well I could save your life but we’re gonna need $60K to do it.”

It doesn’t make sense.

You don't sound like you are in the healthcare business to be throwing out random figures of who makes what.

DP but I haven’t heard of many doctors making $10M + per year.

Plastic surgeon

Only cosmetic plastic surgeons in maybe Beverly Hills or NYC. But their patients are paying out of pocket for elective procedures. Irrelevant to this discussion

Well the CEO of medstar makes several million dollars charging $200 for an aspirin, something that health insurance would deny. There are a lot of players in this game who are fleecing people way before it gets to the health plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In case you are one of those who are morally confused:

Good guy: Daniel Penny
Bad Guy: Luigi Mangione

Disagree. They’re simply divergent species of good guy.

Penny protected his fellow citizens on a micro level. Mangione did so on a macro level. Both saw something that needed doing, and stepped up.

Hard disagree. Penny didn't plan to kill anyone. In fact even in the moment I don't believe he was trying to kill Neely -- I think he used "excessive force" due to adrenaline and the intensity of the moment.

Mangione planned and executed an assassination. Thompson was a really terrible person but that's still murder with prior intent.

What if Mangione had taken his Ivy League degrees, money from his family, and passion regarding a broken healthcare system (including coming from a family that profited off that system) and become an advocate for changing the system? I think it would be as effective as what he's done but without murdering someone on a city street on a Tuesday morning.

And yet, we’ve already real dividends from the UHC incident. Another health insurer was planning to reduce anesthesia benefits, but reversed the day after the UHC crook met his demise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the two big contributors here are going to turn out to be weed (I bet he already used a lot in his frat in college, then it got worse with the back pain, and I’m sure there was free flowing weed in his commune in Hawaii) and playing first person shooter games. Weed absolutely precipitates psychotic illness in kids this age (see here for example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33617756/). And growing up playing a lot of shooter games (it said several places that he was into them and at one point his goal was to develop his own) inured him to real life repercussions of shooting someone.

Yes, maybe to the weed, no to the video games. You probably don’t have college kids. They are frustrated with this country. People aren’t ready to kill, but there was so much attention on him because the environment is sh-t, there are people being needlessly killed across the globe, mental health isn’t funded (see UHC on this), and their quality of life will be worse than their parents (GenX). I’ve heard several kids say they don’t want to “bring kids into this world.” They didn’t want to vote (“feels pointless, it’s all theater”). Everything is so freaking expensive. We have a lot of problems in society that aren’t being addressed by either party because they’re so entrenched on drawing party lines. The millennials are about to have the biggest wealth transfer in history. GenZ is already, and knows they soon, bear the brunt of all of this.

On a micro level, this kid seemed to have a better quality of life than his parents. He lived in Hawaii, working remotely, surfing, and hanging with friends in this co-working/co-living community. He had the benefit of their wealth, no student debt despite a very expensive education. I don't really feel you can blame this on a generational frustration with income inequality or lack of opportunity because he is one of the lucky ones from his generation. Other Gen Zers definitely feel that way and rightfully so, but I don't see why he would.

I think this was more a case of someone with fragile mental health being radicalized online after a few IRL setbacks. He didn't lack for healthcare (had access to good care and the funds to pay for it), he wasn't struggling to buy a home (his parents bought him one), wasn't struggling finding stable work in the "gig economy" (had a good job in a solid field thanks to an expensive BS and MS from Penn, also paid for by his parents). He was very, very fortunate. Yet he became a killer. I think it was just buying into the online rage machine and perhaps being too disconnected from family, combined with underlying and untreated mental illness.

This will sound callous and I don't mean it that way because I feel for Thompson's family, but at least he just killed one guy. He'll go to prison for most of the rest of his life. Situations like this are often much, much worse.

He was born lucky so he shouldn’t have cared about his fellow Americans and the unfair system we live in? I’m not for what he did but the whole “he was fine, why would he care!?” Is such a toxic dcum attitude. Buddha was a prince.

You missed the point. It's not that he shouldn't care.

The PP was talking about how frustrated Gen Zers are because they will have a lower quality of life than their parents and they feel like they are getting screwed. But that's not true for this individual. He may very well have felt he was acting on behalf of others. But he, personally, was not in this position. He had higher quality of life than his parents. He'd already experienced wealth transfer from his family in the form of an expensive private education that set him up in a well-paying and flexible career, and real estate. He was living in Hawaii and spending his large amount of leisure time hiking and surfing, reading books, and hanging with friends.

So the argument that he was just fed up with how unfair the world is and therefore he snapped and murdered this CEO doesn't track. Life was not unfair to him. He may have had some health problems but unlike a lot of UHC's insureds, Mangione had good access to health care thanks to family wealth.

He didn't do this because he had no choice or he'd been pushed to his breaking point. He has mental health problems and likely got radicalized online. Sure, he probably believed he was performing a service for other people. But what rogue shooter DOESN'T think that? I am pretty sure the guy who tried to assassinate Trump also thought he was doing something "for the people." A lot of mass shooters claim to be standing up for an oppressed class. It doesn't make their actions defensible.

[Anonymous]

Raise your hand if you think the UHC acting-CEO declares today a perfect day to do year-end cleaning of pesky documents. Especially if that was true about his mom’s runaround with UHC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In case you are one of those who are morally confused:

Good guy: Daniel Penny
Bad Guy: Luigi Mangione

Disagree. They’re simply divergent species of good guy.

Penny protected his fellow citizens on a micro level. Mangione did so on a macro level. Both saw something that needed doing, and stepped up.

Hard disagree. Penny didn't plan to kill anyone. In fact even in the moment I don't believe he was trying to kill Neely -- I think he used "excessive force" due to adrenaline and the intensity of the moment.

Mangione planned and executed an assassination. Thompson was a really terrible person but that's still murder with prior intent.

What if Mangione had taken his Ivy League degrees, money from his family, and passion regarding a broken healthcare system (including coming from a family that profited off that system) and become an advocate for changing the system? I think it would be as effective as what he's done but without murdering someone on a city street on a Tuesday morning.

And yet, we’ve already real dividends from the UHC incident. Another health insurer was planning to reduce anesthesia benefits, but reversed the day after the UHC crook met his demise.

Anthem was going to roll that back no matter what -- it instantly got a ton of critical press coverage because it's a stupid policy that doesn't make sense. What are they going to do, wake up patients to get them to sign off on the extra anesthesia? The press did its job and covered that nonsense, and people complained, and the policy was going to change no matter what. Mangione didn't make that happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In case you are one of those who are morally confused:

Good guy: Daniel Penny
Bad Guy: Luigi Mangione

+1

There are lots of seriously twisted and perverted people out there. So much justification over an assassination. There are people comparing this to what the founding fathers did for political change and text pretzel logic to reach those conclusions.

I think there's a LOT of righteous anger in this country towards the insurance industry. Righteous.

Sure, some people try to game the system. Those individuals pale in comparison to how the insurance industry is gaming the system.

If you can't understand these simple facts, neither I nor anyone else can help you.

So far as the vast majority of people are concerned, the murder of a corrupt, crooked member of this perverted insurance scam industry was a *shrug* event.

You must work in the insurance industry if you can't appreciate the frustration and anger the average America feels.

I don’t work for the insurance industry and I have had claims denied by insurance companies. I understand there is a lot of frustration, but frustration does not make murder acceptable. I bet you yourself feel frustration about many things. I bet you feel frustrations over things like politics, but you’re not going to go out and assassinate a politician, a president or a CEO. Just because you’re frustrated does not mean murder is acceptable.

If you’re advocating for people assassinating people they’re frustrated with well then I can’t help you understand how wrong it is.

What Luigi did wasn’t heroic. In fact, he was a coward. He shot the man in the back. He didn’t even have the righteous indignation or guts to say something to his face.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Raise your hand if you think the UHC acting-CEO declares today a perfect day to do year-end cleaning of pesky documents. Especially if that was true about his mom’s runaround with UHC.

I mean, everyone knows that “document retention polices” are in reality “document destruction policies.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tim Walz was the murdered CEO’s personal friend.

Even though he had poor character judgement, bad friend choice, and lacked discernment - he did not deserve to be murdered.