UHC CEO Gunned Down in Midtown Manhattan

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son has an MS in a tech field. Smart 1580 SAT kid, gifted, tons of friends, never misbehaved even as a toddler. Around age 27 he started saying his co-workers were laughing at his ideas during meetings (I didn't believe it). He took his passport on a day trip to DC. Why? In case he needed to flee to Canada on short notice (paranoia).

He also started doing a lot of book reading and posting philosophical stuff on SM that sounded similar to Luigi in that it was "deep", but to me, unintelligible. I'm a retired engineer, but had no idea what he was saying.

Then he went radio silent on me for almost a year. Out of the blue he called, very manic and excited that he had the secret to world peace, blah blah.

I finally called my ex and he hopped on a plane. By the time he got there, our son was in a full on psychotic episode where he thought he was in a different dimension.

Thank goodness his roommate knew to call police trained in mental issues. He told the police his dad was really an imposter.

They took him to the psych hospital in Staunton. Wonderful place where he stayed for a month.

His roommates told us our son and a friend had been smoking a lot of pot. The psychiatrist dx him with some combo name of schizophrenia/bipolar and said the exact dx didn't matter, same meds.

She believed there is a link between pot and Schiz onset. Either they turn to pot to handle Sz symptoms, or possible pot usage can bring out Sz, which was lurking below the surface.

I was so grateful he didn't do something to get arrested during his psychotic episode, which had probably been brewing for a year.

Of course he went off the psych meds within 6 months. While he hasn't had a repeat episode in 6 years, I think he isn't smoking pot regularly. However, he is now very under-employed, working part-time as an admin. He lives with his dad, so no pressure to pay bills.

I'm grateful he's "stable". But boy, this story sounded a little too familiar to me. This type of thing was my biggest fear. I can't imagine how Luigi's parents and friends feel.

NP and I can also relate. I’m glad your son is “stable” and understand the quotes. When all of this happened in the news, this was oddly similar to one of my siblings too. I won’t get into too many details but similar enough. He had a job, a house and in his late 20s went missing. We had a little contact that became less and less and he eventually abandoned everything and was homeless for a long time. There was a lot of drug use, hallucinations and paranoia. He was in and out of our lives for years. We didn’t know if we would find him again and if he would be dead or alive. He is in in 40s now and also “stable” without having any episodes for years, clean now, but can’t hold a full time job any longer.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Did anyone read the CNN article about health insurance denials? On a personal level, they are all terrible stories … but on an economic/policy level, I’m not so sure.

The 70 year old woman from Worcester complains that she pays hundreds of dollars a month but her insurer would not cover more than 6 weeks in a post-acute rehab center after her surgery, although it appears that center cost about 5K a week…..the economics just don’t add up. Most elderly people will have multiple health issues and surgeries are not uncommon. If the insurer is charging hundreds in premiums, yet paying out tens of thousands in provider charges, how can this make sense? It used to be that these large costs were rare so the premiums paid by healthy people covered the costs of the unlucky, but now it seems like almost everyone has some health condition or needs a surgery to improve quality of life. Post-acute in patient care is great but that wasn’t even really a thing 20-30 years ago—you just had to have family that would stay with you to help you post-surgery.

And the young girl with cancer probably picked a cheaper plan with a higher co-pay, figuring she was young and healthy. Should insurance companies not be permitted to offer those types of plans? I really don’t know. The problem is that most health care consumers don’t really adequately assess their potential risks and everyone is operating with insufficient information about what their health needs might be, and what things actually cost.

As far as the paramedic and his MRI….that seems ridiculous and he probably has a good appeal.


https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/12/business/us-health-care-insurance-frustrations/index.html

5% of the population accounts for 50% of healthcare spending. There are a lot of people like me who rarely visit doctors and have no prescriptions. I do screenings, blood work, etc., as recommended, but I'm a healthy 47 yo F who pays about $5K a year in premiums.

Are we talking about the same 5% of people year after year? If not, I'm not sure this is particularly helpful information; it just means that in a given year, 5% of the population gets really sick.

It seems like a small share of the US population have long-term illnesses that require expensive treatment, and those people should definitely get all the help they need. But a good chunk of the expensive patients are just people who like to get the latest tests and treatments for every small health issue, expecting miracles and without doing any of the hard work it takes to stay healthy. For example, for most (not all) people, exercise will resolve back pain, but some people refuse to exercise and just want $$$ surgeries and painkillers. I know someone who goes to the ER (or takes her kids there) many times each year, because she has untreated anxiety and refuses to see a therapist or take anxiety meds. And before you tell me I'm lucky that I'm not seriously ill -- I have a chronic condition that I manage cheaply with drastic changes in diet and exercise, while I know some people spending tens of thousands on medication that allows them to live symptom-free without any adjustment to their diet or exercise. I'm not immortal and I'm sure some day I'll need some expensive round of cancer treatment, but getting expensive treatments when absolutely necessary in old age is not the same as expecting them as a routine matter starting in childhood.

Why should one group "definitely" get expensive on going treatment and another be denied some tests?

In order to ensure a baseline of health for the whole population. If you want every headache test to be paid for, at the expense of not having money left for cancer treatments, you will end up with a society where minor conditions are over treated and life-threatening ones are fatal.

Tell us which age group sucks up most of the resources and how that benefits the whole population.

Oh I agree 100%, the ridiculous life-extending care for the oldest cohorts are out of control in this country. Paying $30,000 a month for intensive nursing care for a very sick 90-year old so he can live to 91, all by himself strapped into a bed with a feeding tube.

I fail to see how that person "definitely" needs their care but a younger able bodied person should be shamed and denied for seeking out answers or tests for an issue they are having. Since apparently we have to pick and choose what benefits society as a whole, according to that PP.

You're not reading right. Extending life for the oldest people who are not able to sustain themselves is a waste of money and makes it harder for younger, healthier people to get the care that can actually help them go back to living a normal life.

Well advocate for assisted suicide/euthanasia

+1 I have zero desire to be over 80 and be sick to the point where I’m sitting around waiting to die and all of my family has to sit and watch me whither away and having to tolerate pain. Let the elderly decide after the age of 80 and let people over 65 decide if they have something terminal.

Nurse here. And this is why Advanced Directives and having the conversation with loved ones are so important. We see so much intervention at the end of life that honestly sometimes just looks like torture. And often it is family driven.
I can understand when it’s a young person and there is a hope that person will pull through and make it. But 80-something year old nana with dementia and no quality of life? It happens more often than people realize.

That’s funny because every time one of the older people in my family have entered the hospital, we have been pressured to “let them go”. Even when they were simply dehydrated and needed IV fluids. You aren’t the person to make the decision about whether someone has “quality of life”.

A nurse decided it was time to kill my dad, who had dementia, and gave a lethal dose of morphine.

The nurse didn’t inform anyone in advance that she planned to do this.

Pretty sick.

I don’t believe you. That would be a crime. The amount of morphine is tracked.

Okay. Don’t believe me.

I’m not sure why you think tracking morphine would prevent a nurse from administering morphine to a hospice patient and leaving them alone to die. She did call to say “it won’t be long now.”
But we were hours away.

After the ambulance arrived, narcan was administered.

I hope you never have to be on hospice and that no nurse tries to kill you because you seem unable to believe sick hospice nurses exist in the world.

DP. Because there has to be a doctor’s order for morphine and she has to document how much exactly was given at what time and that needs to match the order. When a patient is in the final stages of death and having aganol breathing, there may be an order to titrate the morphine to comfort. But again, that is to make the patient comfortable- it is not assisted suicide or killing them.

I will add same thing happened to my grandmother. Given morphine. Died morning after. She also had bruises all over body.

I’ve sat with three dying people. Two died very quickly after the morphine.

Morphine kills people. I don’t mind nurses giving it to actively dying people if they want it because it’s better than suffering but it’s not right to give it to people who are still up and moving around. But they can if they are on hospice—at least in Montgomery Country, Maryland because it happened.

So whatever you say about the rules and the law, nurses are giving it to patients and killing them. I doubt this was the nurse’s only kill.

If you read The Good Nurse, you will see how that nurse was able to kill so many people because colleagues would not or could not prove it.

The author told me he put that book, his book, on his mother’s side table at the hospital and kept a close watch.

Part of the reason nurses get away with it is people don’t want to believe it. Meanwhile, more people die.

Hope it doesn’t happen to you. It’s pretty awful.

After the narcan was administered, they were transferred to the hospital. At the hospital, I saw the difference in how the killer nurse administered a lethal dose versus the hospital nurses administering morphine correctly.

I know you don’t want to believe it happened. I sure wish it hadn’t.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:He is a jail house hottie

Him being attractive and well educated is doing him a lot of favors in the court of public opinion.

And young
And tall
And well read (but mostly newer books out, not classics).

Don’t forget rich. None of his peers have came out and can come up with a negative thing to say about him either and from the outside seems perfectly nice. He would be a perfect boyfriend to the Gen Z girls if he wasn’t a killer.

His peers are saying nice things about him because he was a nice, smart young man.

Something happened after that.

He went through a period of growth, journey, and dislocation; a transformation, whether for good or bad. Lots of people go through this type of transformation and convert, become activists, and commit to a different path. Most of them do not tip over into violence, let alone cold-blooded murder. Whether some kind of mental illness made that additional step possible, I don't know. He may have come to view the CEO as simply one-dimensional, similar to a character in a video game or in a movie, or as a collection of numbers (salary, number of denials, etc.) tied to a position, but not the living and breathing person. In some ways, this is similar to what UHC leadership does, as well as its staff: insurance participants are just a collection of numbers (age, premium, coverage limits, costs, medical codes, etc.). UHC staff and leadership make decisions about who lives and dies, too. They just don't pull the trigger.

And you know, that post about Governor Shapiro writing messages on those bombs has really stayed with me.

Anyway, Luigi murdered a man. He will do his time. There is no way he won't go to prison.

I can actually think of scenarios where he doesn’t go to prison. Jury nullification is one of them. Good luck finding 12 jurors to convict a handsome, educated, young guy who in the eyes of millions is a “modern day Robin Hood.” Fwiw, I don’t agree with that, I’m just stating what I am seeing online, including in comments under articles from reputable newspapers, leaning both left and right. Next to no sympathy for BT and massive amount of support for LM.

Not everyone thinks he’s handsome nor is he robbing the rich to give to the poor. Stop romanticizing a cold-blooded, cowardly killer. He’ll be found guilty and spend the rest of his life in prison.

C’mon now. The guy has been on the run for days, under tremendous stress, not eating, not showering, not sleeping, and still his mugshot looks better than 99% of the men in DC on their best day.

Amen

Aside from the killer thing, he is hot and smart as F.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mom was contacted by FBI night before his arrest.

She said she didn’t think it was her son. I don’t know…the fact that he went completely missing and then there were multiple pictures with his smile and eyebrows. I think she had to know. What a nightmare for a mother.

Haven’t read that.

But I can see how a low pixel photo if a Mediterranean male looks like many people I know.

He wasn’t caught because of his eyebrows or face, he was caught because of his clothes, mask, hat and weird loner behavior.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:He is a jail house hottie

Him being attractive and well educated is doing him a lot of favors in the court of public opinion.

And young
And tall
And well read (but mostly newer books out, not classics).

Don’t forget rich. None of his peers have came out and can come up with a negative thing to say about him either and from the outside seems perfectly nice. He would be a perfect boyfriend to the Gen Z girls if he wasn’t a killer.

His peers are saying nice things about him because he was a nice, smart young man.

Something happened after that.

Drug usage and it might sound far fetched but maybe a cult or extremist group. If you look at the timeline he was basically unemployed in San Francisco for a year and stopped talking to family in July. That time period seems to be the most critical here and it doesn’t look like he has any friends from that time coming out to talk about him. It has to be something about that last year.

Or more likely just schizophrenia. It develops in young men around that age.

I don’t think so. According to reports from the PA courthouse, he’s alert, makes intelligent remarks, and appears to be totally with it.m

I think he experienced through tremendous pain with his back injury and the botched surgery. Part of the reason why the surgery went wrong is because doctors had to wait too long to perform it, most likely because of insurance issues. I also read reports that his mom went through very painful neuropathy and had issues with her insurance as well.

Experiencing debilitating pain or watching a loved one endure such pain can radicalize even the most gentle of souls.
I feel for him just like I feel for Brian Thompson and both of their families.
A horrible, senseless loss of life that could have been avoided if our country cared more about people and less about money.

Haven’t read this anywhere.

That would still point to hard core indoctrination the last 12 months OR a severe psychotic breakdown which is ongoing.

Back pain or surgeries or treatment or pain killers has not been publicly verified nor disclosed.
Clearly it has appeal to you and some of the public as an acceptable killer motive.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:And the United Healthcare parent co CEO writes an NYT op ed that says nothing. Did he use the free version of ChatGPT?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/united-health-care-brian-thompson-luigi-mangione.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Wow. The comments are savage.

And that isn’t even close to what’s going on in TikTok and Instagram.

Wow that you for linking tht NYT.

This is being shoved down our throats as if we need to care more about this one rich guy than all the other victims of gun violence in America everyday, including two innocent ES kids shot the same day.

We the public are not buying it, sorry no. He can be mourned by his own family friends and colleagues like every other a average Joe in America

Correct. The problem is that Americans have made their choice with respect to gun violence. If Sandy Hook did not change minds, this certainly will not.

Meanwhile, pretty much every American who isn’t in the top .01% of wealth has suffered themselves or knows someone who has suffered because of health insurance companies. Many know people who have died because of health insurance companies.

Combine that with a killer who is unquestionably smart and gorgeous, where every fact and photo released makes him more appealing, not less, and you have the beginning of a folk movement.

I am not defending it. I am just describing what is going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And the United Healthcare parent co CEO writes an NYT op ed that says nothing. Did he use the free version of ChatGPT?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/united-health-care-brian-thompson-luigi-mangione.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

He lost me at his opening statement about the tremendous “outpouring of support for Brian Thompson and their company too.” What support?! Even I, a 1%er who is happy with her UHC insurance plan and is surrounded by other 1%ers cannot think of three people who feel any fondness for UHC or its leadership. The comments under this article are savage.

Stay in your mass media and social media bubble and you’ll continue to not know.

What are you talking about? I deliberately consume media and social media across the political spectrum — and I mean really widely, like I listen to far right and far left podcasters too — and I am simply not seeing a groundswell of support for the UHC CEO. There are tepid attempts to talk about how this isn’t who we are as a nation, some attempts to shame the other political side, there are serious discussions about extrajudicial political assassinations and strong criticism of that, etc. But I see absolutely nothing I would characterize as an outpouring of support.

Where can I find this? I’m literally not sure how to make my media and social consumption broader.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And the United Healthcare parent co CEO writes an NYT op ed that says nothing. Did he use the free version of ChatGPT?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/united-health-care-brian-thompson-luigi-mangione.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

He lost me at his opening statement about the tremendous “outpouring of support for Brian Thompson and their company too.” What support?! Even I, a 1%er who is happy with her UHC insurance plan and is surrounded by other 1%ers cannot think of three people who feel any fondness for UHC or its leadership. The comments under this article are savage.

Whoever is doing their crisis PR has an impossible job.

Difficult but not impossible if UHC addresses the complaints.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mom was contacted by FBI night before his arrest.

She said she didn’t think it was her son. I don’t know…the fact that he went completely missing and then there were multiple pictures with his smile and eyebrows. I think she had to know. What a nightmare for a mother.

Haven’t read that.

But I can see how a low pixel photo if a Mediterranean male looks like many people I know.

He wasn’t caught because of his eyebrows or face, he was caught because of his clothes, mask, hat and weird loner behavior.

NP here. It was reported in many media outlets that FBI interviewed his mother last Sunday. She didn’t think it was her son (which I don’t blame her, who would want to admit it, she may have been in denial).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And the United Healthcare parent co CEO writes an NYT op ed that says nothing. Did he use the free version of ChatGPT?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/united-health-care-brian-thompson-luigi-mangione.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

He lost me at his opening statement about the tremendous “outpouring of support for Brian Thompson and their company too.” What support?! Even I, a 1%er who is happy with her UHC insurance plan and is surrounded by other 1%ers cannot think of three people who feel any fondness for UHC or its leadership. The comments under this article are savage.

Whoever is doing their crisis PR has an impossible job.

Difficult but not impossible if UHC addresses the complaints.

The problem is that UHC cannot address complaints without cutting into their profits. And they won’t do that. So yes, their crisis PR is impossible.

[Anonymous]

Things are getting weird.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And the United Healthcare parent co CEO writes an NYT op ed that says nothing. Did he use the free version of ChatGPT?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/united-health-care-brian-thompson-luigi-mangione.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Wow. The comments are savage.

And that isn’t even close to what’s going on in TikTok and Instagram.

Wow that you for linking tht NYT.

This is being shoved down our throats as if we need to care more about this one rich guy than all the other victims of gun violence in America everyday, including two innocent ES kids shot the same day.

We the public are not buying it, sorry no. He can be mourned by his own family friends and colleagues like every other a average Joe in America

Correct. The problem is that Americans have made their choice with respect to gun violence. If Sandy Hook did not change minds, this certainly will not.

Meanwhile, pretty much every American who isn’t in the top .01% of wealth has suffered themselves or knows someone who has suffered because of health insurance companies. Many know people who have died because of health insurance companies.

Combine that with a killer who is unquestionably smart and gorgeous, where every fact and photo released makes him more appealing, not less, and you have the beginning of a folk movement.

I am not defending it. I am just describing what is going on.

This is part of what has desensitized people to violence. Shootings are just things that happen now. I think people are just indifferent about this case or using it as a vent about health insurance, I don’t think most actually care that much about the murder itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Things are getting weird.

I think this is supposed to be a dark edgy humor thing. Gen Z is quite depressed and desensitized to violence and are not afraid of telling a messed up joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Things are getting weird.

I think this is supposed to be a dark edgy humor thing. Gen Z is quite depressed and desensitized to violence and are not afraid of telling a messed up joke.

I didn’t click the link (do I want to see whatever it is? Probably not). Just observing that Gen X grew up practicing for the moment when someone would enter their school and gun them and their friends and teachers down. Meanwhile, they watched this very thing happen again and again to kids just like them. Month after month, year after year, for their whole lives, we as a society said “gun violence is ordinary, good luck out there.”

Desensitized? I mean…yeah. Did we think they somehow wouldn’t be?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Things are getting weird.

I think this is supposed to be a dark edgy humor thing. Gen Z is quite depressed and desensitized to violence and are not afraid of telling a messed up joke.

I didn’t click the link (do I want to see whatever it is? Probably not). Just observing that Gen X grew up practicing for the moment when someone would enter their school and gun them and their friends and teachers down. Meanwhile, they watched this very thing happen again and again to kids just like them. Month after month, year after year, for their whole lives, we as a society said “gun violence is ordinary, good luck out there.”

Desensitized? I mean…yeah. Did we think they somehow wouldn’t be?

Right, and I think the constant lecturing about how people should be reacting to this is falling very flat with that generation. Why should they care that a CEO was gunned down when we as a society don’t care that they as kids are being gunned down in their schools, especially a CEO who probably caused their mom and dad to not get necessary healthcare. The lectures sound hollow.