Always seemed pretty strange to me that you can build and oversee an organization widely perceived (whether fairly or not) as evil, host what those evil-perceivers will view as Bad Rich Guy Conference in public, in a country where anyone can get as many guns as they want, and there isn't more violence like this. Seems like an unstable operating point for a society.
This is the comment that has been in my head since the news broke, and I feel like we are only at the beginning, like the pause before the first drop of a rollercoaster with the forward looking macro (political and economic tension, broadly speaking). Laws and rules only matter so long as we're all willing to believe they do.
Same here. With as many guns and victims of corporate greed that we have, I'm actually pretty shocked that we don't see this happening as routinely as, say, school shootings.
I wonder if we'd see slightly more ethical behavior from corporations if their C-level staff and board members had to routinely practice lock-down drills because they were getting offed once a week.
I don't know how to write this comment in a way that won't land me in a CIA black site so I'll just start with a disclaimer that this post in no way celebrates or condones any violence, but I wouldn't be surprised if political assassination attempts go up 10-fold in the next 10 years. We already saw two different assassination attempts against Trump during the lead up to the election. You can read my older comments to know my political leanings, I don't like Trump. But wow, I'm genuinely more worried about the stability of our society because of increases in violent acts like this and the inevitable retaliation by the government against all people in the name of "security", than anything Trump could enact.
I wouldn't be surprised if New York passes new gun control laws because of this shooting; I wouldn't be surprised if there's a congresscritter or White House Staffer or judge who's assassinated in the next several years causing some kind of martial law situation. It's scary times we live in right now.
>Laws and rules only matter so long as we're all willing to believe they do.
And everyone has seen it thrown in our faces for a year or so now what the blatant two-tiered system looks like. On a longer time scale if you want to count the lack of consequences for those behind an attempted coup in 2021 and a recession that harmed millions of lives in 2008.
If the government won't hold people accountable, and people are pushed to their ends, then things like this can happen. As OP stated, thankfully, it doesn't happen as often as one would think given our society. It does take a lot to murder someone else.
I think people skip over this a LOT, but it's the basis for society and was long before we had the means to track down most killers and bring them to any sort of justice. Most people, even when given freedom from consequences and ample opportunities, are not murderers.
People do value their lives and liberty and (for all the memes to the contrary) the police are very good at hunting down murderers of high-value targets because most challenges the police face are challenges of focus and resource-allocation and cities tend to authorize a spare-no-expense approach to something perceived as a direct attack on the fundamentals of the status quo. Consider the full-scale house-to-house manhunt after the Boston Marathon bombing as an example case.
So I think most people know that if you come at the king, you are definitely throwing your future away (and Americans, for all the complaining, tend to be comfortable / hopeful enough that they don't want to do that).
Are they? I thought homicides committed outdoors, with a gun, between people of no or distant social connection were basically unsolvable. Even for a rich white victim. Unless this guy dropped his wallet, used an exotic caliber, or is somehow connected to a prior threat, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he is not found.
Even the Secret Service doesn't have a great track record for preventing attempts. Their presence puts some stress on the perpetrators, which does help, and they are good at preventing quick wide-open follow-ups to a miss or partial success, but they're bad at preventing the first shot or two. And I don't think it's because they're exceptionally bad at what they do, but because if someone really wants to take a shot, entirely stopping them is a hard problem by the time they're already close and armed.
I don't think most Americans perceive health insurance organizations as evil, nor do they condense the fault to a specific person (like the CEO). Maybe the entire system is at fault, but individual greed isn't a major failing, it's virtually expected.
On the internet, all conversations about health care will garner comments mocking the US system, but as a resident it's not like we have a lot of choices.
I guess suspects will be a list of people who have been paying into United Health Care insurance who thought they were covered, but got turned down, possibly for a terminal illness, for greater profits.
edit: We do not know the shooters motivations, nor do I presume to know. But wanted to add a link for context to the above comment to show context for the statement.
I advocate for the fairer distribution of wealth in society. Not only because it's fair but because it's better for everyone. There are many reasons for this including avoiding the alienation of labor and giving people dignity. All it takes is the ultra-wealthy to have slightly less wealth.
So why is wealth concentration bad for society apart from that? Because the ultimate form of wealth distribution is war and revolution. It's way the descendants of Rockefeller, the Medicis or Caesar don't own the world. Society eventually snaps and a lot of violence ensues. Eventually you end up with the French Revolution and heads end up on pikes or separated by guillotines.
One of the messages of Fight Club is that the rich and powerful cannot insulate themselves from the people they are oppressing. Your gardener, your driver, your chef, your security guard. Any of them is capable of taking matters into their hands and they will only be pushed so far.
You saw this play out in Japan with the reaction to Shinzo Abe's assassination a couple of years ago. While world leaders were outraged, the Japanese kinda got it. You can dig deep into this with the Unification Church, its influence on Japanese politics and, if you really want, how the Unification Church is tied to the CIA.
United Healthcare is quite literally killing people for profit. Just like the Sacklers and so many others. We've become completely desensitized to this. Private health insurance is completely inefficient (look at how much the US pays per-capita for health care vs any other developed nation and then compare our coverage). We could literally save millions of lives and cut costs by getting rid of these lecherous middlemen.
So I don't condone or justify violence like this. It's simply analysis to see that this kind of thing is going to continue to happen as material conditions worsen and wealth inequality rises. In his ~3 year tenure are United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson quite literally killed thousands of people yet there's so little outrage over that.
I have the same thoughts especially thinking how we’re on the precipice of possible mass workforce displacement from ai and robots like waymo. What I just can’t understand is why anyone would feel satisfied being the billionaire in a bunker among miles of slums (picturing India) - even if the desperate folks are successfully oppressed.
>You keep saying killed, but there is a difference between letting people die and killing them.
Using dubious legalese to deny a life saving claim that happens to cost say $200,000 that you took premiums for is pretty close. If you pay out of pocket, it might save your life, but you're bankrupt, your children get no inheritance, and you probably lose your house. That's a pretty insidious act for profit IMO.
>Voters are widely split on healthcare reform and have no consensus beyond the fact that they want it. I want healthcare reform too, but probably dont agree with you on what that means. I don't that that justifies a consequentialist claim that the other is a killer, let alone reprisal.
I think the easiest step would be to drop the Medicaid age from 65 to 60. Drop it 5 years every 5 years or so. The lower it goes, the cheaper that bracket will be. I don't know why any politician hasn't suggested this, but I can guess.
you already knew this when you made your post, but the calculus changes a little bit when there is a positive financial incentive to letting people die
> You keep saying killed, but there is a difference between letting people die and killing them.
There's also a difference between letting people die for whom you have no responsibility, and actively taking on the responsibility to prevent deaths in exchange for profit, and then letting the people whose lives you're responsible for die.
If you don't want to be held responsible when you let people die, don't take on that responsibility by becoming a health insurer.
Health insurers actually did worse than that: when other people wanted to take on the responsibility (i.e. single-payer healthcare) they actively blocked them from saving lives so they could go on profiting.
If this isn't "murder" or "killing" in your eyes, then maybe we just need a new word for the callous abdication of responsibilities that you signed up to provide for profit, when doing so results in the deaths of thousands.
Disgruntled employee? Patient died or suffered lifelong disability due to denied claims and delay in care? Bankruptcy due to paying out of pocket medical expenses?
all potential suspects that can wrap the world, and more.
UNH CEO reaped what he sowed. To be honest, this is unlikely to do anything in the long term. In the short term, dip in UNH stonk, but recover over next quarter.
Next cookie cutter CEO to be installed will just continue the same shit. Will probably demand 24/7 security paid for by company. Costs subsequently passed down to the unfortunate people that have to pay for their dogshit insurance policies.
> Next cookie cutter CEO to be installed will just continue the same shit.
Maybe, but what lays outside their door will always haunt them. There’s no replacement that won’t have this in the back of their mind, and I suspect this is sort of the point.
From the killer’s perspective, this was probably the best case outcome.
The worst case? The decision makers of these companies fear every day. And you know what? Everyone thinks twice when they recognize danger.
It will always be a challenge to allocate limited healthcare resources. It's an unsettled question why the US accepts such an expensive means (private health insurance) of doing so.
Because we don't have another option. Your job dictates your insurance, not you, and most jobs explicitly search for insurance companies that don't end up costing them much (but cover enough that people still think they have coverage, maybe).
Of course, these stories are happening after individuals have made their elections for insurance AND after the companies that would be choosing the various insurance companies to pick from would have already selected their projected insurance provider.
> Your job dictates your insurance, not you, and most jobs [...]
This is answering the question with a very narrow focus on what any one person can do. Sure, when I filled out my job's open enrollment last month, there was no checkbox labeled "Evil Corporation Insurer (y/n)", but there's no inviolable law of nature that requires the US to be this way.
That is absolutely true, even no matter the government, even a non-capitalist socialist commune must allocate and there's no right answer.
It can become insidious in capitalism. We have organizations like Kaiser who say "we'll run the hospital and focus on preventative care, if we spend $50 today that avoids $50,000 a few years from now" - Kaiser notably does hospitals AND insurance in a vertically integrated manner. That's all reasonable.
Then a United might see "we can spend $5,000 today and patient will be healthier-ish, or $200 yearly for a medically equivalent treatment". And so they do the actuarial math that the patient will die in a few years, they calculate revenue from that patient based on how long they might stay on the plan, and find the solution that maximizes profit. So the mentality isn't Kaiser-like "i.e. we're on the hook for this patient, let's minimize their health problems to save money", it's more like "we will minimize the cost of this patient full stop, if that means they don't get care then they don't get care"
Privatizing hospitals further would not help the vast majority of Americans. Without non-privatization agreements, the average American could not seek or afford the medical attention they need.
As someone that's lived on the Canadian border for the past 20 years, I frankly think we need more regulations. Drug prices in the US are so absurdly high that most terminally sick Americans will happily drive back and forth to Windsor if it means treatment they can afford. It's a testament to America's core dysfunction, something that Canada can somehow get right on their first try but America... well, we struggled to put Shkreli behind bars.
It isn't like US public system, medicare, is great. I still end up buying my folks supplemental. This narrative of pubic vs private misses most of the nuance.
there's so much nuance in an insurance company having billions left over every year after subtracting payouts from premiums! it's sooo complex and nuanced
> I think you're forgetting at least Jeffrey Epstein, Seth Rich, the Boeing whistleblowers, and probably many others?
Even if we assume all of those are nefarious, that is much fewer people over a much longer period. If you have to add "probably many others", it feels like you are just extrapolating in your favor without evidence.
Just saw video of the shooting on X, the guy was cool as a cucumber. Racking a new round after every shot. Not a hint of desperation, fear or anxiety. He didn't even run off after shooting. https://x.com/Tr00peRR/status/1864376034465890417
Automatic and semi-automatic weapons work the way the do because force of the round (recoil) pushes back the bolt carrier, which a spring will then push forward again. Shot is fired, bolt carrier goes back, spring pushes it forward.
Subsonic ammunition have less charge than regular ammunition, to reduce the velocity. This also means less recoil. Combined with the spring now being too stiff, the bolt carrier will simply not move back far enough to successfully chamber a new round. So you have to manually chamber a new round between each shot. One solution is to use a light / less stiff spring that is adjusted to the force of the subsonic ammo.
Perhaps subsonic rounds that did not have enough charge to drive the slide. It looks like there may be a suppression device on the end. My first thought was home made.
Or it could just be a single action pistol, as noted in the article. They’re not common but there are a handful of them that are relatively easy to obtain. Competitive shooters use them and it seems that Seals are sometimes issued single action pistols too.
It's a major regulatory failure to allow insurance companies to deny any claims at all of items that have an FDA approved indication. Ideally, the insurance company should not be able to legally deny any FDA approved action that a licensed doctor has prescribed, with no exceptions. Insurance companies are not doctors, and they should not get to play doctor.
Very likely. It was very likely planned in advance due today being “investor day”. A person with nothing to lose at this point.
“ 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.”
[1]
My bet is that it’s someone that got stiffed by UHC themself or lost someone close to them. You only have to get prematurely released from the hospital because some representative over the phone says so once for you to see this system is incredibly broken.
There's not many cases in 2024 where people get denied hospital care because of insurance.
Get stuck with massive crippling bills? Sure. Can't afford insulin? Likely. But if you are at the hospital and your coverage is denied, legally that's the hospital's problem.
They won’t be overt about it, for obvious reasons. I can tell you with certainty though that they’ll do things like discharge you early, try to send you to another facility, etc even if that’s not the medically sound thing to do.
It happens all the time in 2024, but it takes the form of pharmacy benefit managers arbitrarily forcing people off effective medications onto cheaper, less effective ones.
> A gunman, who investigators tell CNN was waiting for some time before Thompson’s arrival, opened fire from 20 feet away firing multiple times, striking Thompson.
This from CNN makes it sound like it could possibly be targeted, though there are very few details at this time and sometimes these things are misreported in the immediate aftermath.
I don't think this ceo should be killed. However it's absolutely the case that this ceo has taken actions that resulted in the deaths and suffering of others. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if someone lost a family member due to this ceo and that turned out to be the motive.
I'm nervous about the precedent this sets, if that turns out to be the motive.
It reminds me of the assassination of Shinzo Abe. Original assumptions were that it was a political rival... Turned out to be a very simultaneously personal and abstracted "My mother gave away our entire inheritance to the religious group Abe supports and legitimized" grievance.
I'd be surprised if it wasn't a hired hit by a jilted ex/mistress or somebody going for assets and a life insurance policy. That's what it usually is with these rich people. Crazy pissed off patients usually shoot up the hospital and broke people can't hire a hitman.
I'd never condone or celebrate an act like this, but if we're supposed to just accept seemingly random gun violence as an unavoidable fact of life (as various politicians have proclaimed in recent years) health insurance CEOs are preferable to classrooms full of kids.
You know, Japan just recently had a gunman kill a very powerful person and then the country basically prosecuted the gunman but also completely vindicated them.
It's unclear for the moment if this is an angry customer or jilted lover type of killer. Is it personal or is it professional? But as the insurance company with the highest claim rejection rate, they are quite literally killing their customers, manufacturing their own long list of aggrieved suspects.
Appears to be a targeted shooting, curious to see what the motive is.
Undergoing treatment and having to deal with insurance can put people in a dark place. Even if it's just an accidental injury putting you in medical debt, it can feel like the end of your life.
I'll never forget getting denied neulasta while on my last round of chemo and having to pay $21,000 out of pocket until we argued it with insurance. I wouldn't go as far as murder, but I can only imagine others would.
Just want to caution everyone to not jump to conclusions. Remember when Bob Lee was shot in San Francisco and everyone assumed it was because of how unsafe San Francisco is? And then it turned out to be another tech exec?
Beyond the one motive we can think of, this person (like any person) had other things going on in their life. We have no idea what the motive was until the killer is found.
There's an ongoing "all the big liberal cities are scary" vibe in much media that's been internalized by a large proportion of the population.
I know multiple people (and have myself experienced this) who've been greeted with warnings and concern from relatives when traveling to major cities... when those cities have violent crime rates far lower than the places they/we live. Like, a fifth as much or lower. It's still "common knowledge" that e.g. Manhattan is way more dangerous than a "safe" red state suburban/exurban county (LOL, very not necessarily true) and that the largest cities must be way more dangerous than small and mid-sized cities (also very not necessarily true).
Sure, but there's a lot of speculation that it was a wronged customer. It could have been someone he works with. It could have been someone from his personal life. People who are not Healthcare CEO's also are murdered, there are lots of possible motives.
We don't even know that the killer got the right person.
It's not working for me. First attempt said that the gift expired. Subsequent attempts just act like non-gift links without telling me that it is an expired gift link.
Desperate people will do things like that. I’d be unsurprised.
If you feel that you have nothing to lose, nothing will stop you from doing such things. What is fear of prison for someone who just lost a loved one to what they feel is a heartless bureaucracy lead by this guy?
No paywall, same amount of detail (little) - looked around but not much detail generally in any of the outlets except there was an investor day, he was leaving a hotel, shot in the chest, deceased.
What’s uniquely American about killing decision makers? Especially morally questionable individuals? Yeah, it’s a garbage way for society to operate but this is an expression of the human condition.
If anything this is a level of action I wouldn’t expect from America.
There will always be random or isolated acts of violence. The thing that really scares me about this one is that over on reddit, there is overwhelming widespread jubilation.
I think a lot of people might believe their life or the life of a loved one was ruined or endangered by a health insurance CEO and such a person might feel justified in such an attack.
When you think of the awful stress that CEOs put on people like
CEO pay is an outlier partly for their vision/talent, but primarily
because they individually take the hit whenever a subordinate, no matter
how far down the chain, fucks up publicly.
A grievance will be reported upon soon. If the gunman was trying to improve society, I'm not convinced they did anything but the opposite. - sad in that regard. Good luck to the tragedy in the background, and rip Mr. Thompson.
Only a handful of states require a permit to buy a firearm. A suppressor is equally easy to procure, and failing that, can be machined by anyone somewhat competent with a lathe. Won't link to it here, Youtube videos available with a quick web search.
Suppressors are not equally easy to legally procure!
Suppressors/Silencers are federally regulated by the National Firearms Act (NFA) and are treated similarly to machine guns and sawed-off shotguns (the import/manufacture of those are further regulated by later legislation).
From Wikipedia[1]: Private owners wishing to purchase an NFA item must obtain approval from the ATF, pass an extensive background check to include submitting a photograph and fingerprints, fully register the firearm, receive ATF written permission before moving the firearm across state lines, and pay a tax.
And I think you may have understated the ease of manufacturing. Especially if someone only needs to use it once and don't care about the legality.
That's basically propaganda and half-admits it on the site. There are almost no situations where you will not be buying your firearm from an FFL and you will have to fill out a background check form and have a waiting period.
The only private sales that happen are among criminals and within families. Regular people aren't going to risk the kind of charges that stem from misuse after a private sale. Certainly nobody with a legitimate business and livelihood to protect.
Crazy, if true. Perpetrator knew many people in the area. Had to reduce the chance of raising suspicion. Although “silencers” (suppressors is the better term) are not very silent as depicted in films and tv, but do suppress the muzzle flash and suppress generated sound.
I guess in a crowded NYC, that’s just enough needed to escape the scene.
Suppressors don't just reduce the sound, but they reduce muzzle flash pretty dramatically. So it would help prevent someone from seeing the flash and knowing where the shot came from
In the interest of brevity, they're not called silencers, they're called suppressors since they don't "silence" anything like in a Hollywood movie. Typically a suppressor will reduce the sound signature of a gunshot from something like 140dBA to 110dBA. Still enough to cause hearing damage and be heard a quarter mile away.
The original use case was hearing protection. The modern tactical use case is that it makes it somewhat harder to tell where a shot came from. In almost no scenario does it actually make a gunshot quiet (maybe a subsonic .22).
Off-topic, but the US is, oddly, a bit of an outlier compared to some of our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, where buying one can be an over the counter transaction. It's weird to be in a situation where the US is more restrictive in anything related to firearms, but I assume the European attitude is that it reduces nuisance when gun ownership is more regulated at the front end.
There's a very good article published by ProPublica about the company in question. The name of the company is "EviCore" - so at least they're being relatively upfront about it.
No, but this is a case where incorrect AI decisions may legitimately contribute to people's deaths. Let's also not normalize the idea that it's OK for people to die so one of the most profitable companies in the world can make even more money.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, or that I feel that killing is OK, but as others have expressed throughout this thread, it feels weird to say stuff like that in regards to a company that itself has normalized letting people die for the sake of higher profits.
This is not even remotely close to the "big issue" with UHG. There's probably no individual company that's responsible for more dysfunction in the American health system than UHG.
Not that I think it justifies murdering the CEO, but also such is the nature of systematic violation of massive numbers of people's sense of justice.
I doubt anyone on HN would have any interest in normalizing that practice. But almost everyone who will be wronged by these systems are going to be up in arms.
I think we'll see a lot more of this sort of thing in the future. Your car killed my mother and the law said it was fine. Your insurance company denied my grandma's claim and she died in agony after paying premiums for 30 years.
Let's just hope that autonomous drones don't become trivially capable as weapons. At that point, everyone from the President and your local police chief to the chairman of Bank of America and the local ambulance chasing lawyer who sued the wrong guy's mom after she hit someone in a car accident would be in a very bad situation.
We should really try to get this under control before it gets out of hand.
Nobody was killed because an AI product was inaccurate. If this was indeed the reason, this CEO was killed for killing someone's family member by denying them healthcare.
You're not expected to have a faultless AI but you're expected to supervise it, to have an appeal process, and to make things right when AI makes mistakes. In other words, this is a "high risk system" under the EU AI Act, which should have appropriate safeguards in place.
> Human oversight shall aim to prevent or minimise the risks to health, safety or fundamental rights that may emerge when a high-risk AI system is used in accordance with its intended purpose or under conditions of reasonably foreseeable misuse, in particular where such risks persist despite the application of other requirements set out in this
Section.
I don't think the parent poster is doing that, I think they are pointing out that when the ai products are faulty and result in the predictable deaths or suffering of people, someone out there might get angry enough to make bad choices.
Per Reddit: "One is a high powered assassin whose livelihood depends on his ability to rationalize beyond emotion to calculate the cost of a life. The other guy is still alive."
Edit: I would love to make $20/minute every day finding ways to drive people into medical bankruptcy, despair, and death, just like him, because being rich is awesome. :)
He means that if the state, courts and other systems don't get people justice or something you can squint at and call justice when they are wronged some fraction of those wronged will go outside the systems and seek to get even instead.
The (rare, perhaps crazy) people who shoot CEOs or armor bulldozers are what check the power of the state to ignore this part of its job.
Not this commenter, but how I've often heard it expressed was we created the justice system as a better, more civilized alternative to putting people in holes just outside of town. At such a time the justice system stops working, as it increasingly seems to have RE: the rich, then we resume holes.
And insurance companies want us to need more or pay more for health care, not less. Insurance is regulated and the companies can only hold on to a certain percentage of the premiums.
They would rather hold on to 20% of a huge number than 20% of a big number.
My insurance denied me a MRI and physical therapy because having 2 working arms was a luxury. Had to pay out of pocket to be able to lift my arm above my head. Private insurance can go shove it.
"Americans consume too much healthcare"? I'm afraid to guess the logical conclusion to this, but I will counter with "Americans are offered two little preventative healthcare", because in more advanced countries where that is an option, the costs are lower.
The primary reason for the cost difference is the massive network of middlemen injected into the system, and rampant profiteering by for-profit healthcare companies.
Average cost of 1 vial of insulin in France: $9.08
Average cost of 1 vial of insulin in the US: $98.70
HDThoreaun: huffing some libertarian shit "The people are using too much insulin."
It doesn't have to be 17%, it can be an arbitrary number because the ones who decide on the nominal pricing are the ones who make money on them being extremely high. These same procedures can in some cases cost even 2-3 orders of magnitude less - and not in another country but in the same hospital but with a patient willing to pay in cash.
>The main reason for that is because Americans consume too much health care.
No, come on man, this is easily googleable. Americans go to the doctor less than other countries, they stay in the hospital less than other countries, they have lower life expectancy, infant and mother mortality than other countries. If you want to know why we spend so damned much, it's because we're billed 2-3x as much for the same care as other countries.
TV pundits are compensated based on their ability to keep audiences engaged. The people who decide that anger-based engagement is acceptable are, like Brian Thompson, executives.
I don't think any of them deserve to be murdered, but the pundits are an odd place to place blame.
Guns are inanimate objects and cannot be ascribed blame. Gunmen and lawmakers can.
This CEO, in particular, has almost certainly taken actions that resulted in preventable suffering and death.
To some degree, that's the nature of running health insurance companies, but if he put profits ahead of patient outcomes, I think we could have a very reasonable discussion on the morality of letting people die at scale vs murder.
What planet do you live on? Are YOU getting your information and worldview from "TV pundits"?
Corporate greed is a race to the bottom and CEOs are the avatars of that greed. Nobody needs a pundit to tell them that, they're experiencing it first hand for themselves, and you're playing a losing game defending them. You will never convince a man who struggles to pay rent and buy food that a CEO deserves millions of dollars. You will never convince a woman that she deserves to be in thousands of dollars of healthcare debt so that the CEO can buy extra houses and cars.
Human nature will never accept this, no matter how much you wish your libertarian philosophizing about the world was representative of reality. Corporations and billionaires continue to gain power and working class people are getting exploited more and more. There's a breaking point and we're racing towards it fast.
Won't spin off reform, and in all likelihood, is just going to result in Fortune 500 companies doing unethical shit to begin budgeting for armed protection for their top brass.
There is nothing wrong with "eating the rich", because if something were to happen to the rich, they brought it upon themselves, since they control the governance via lobbying, special interest groups, media, corporations, NGOs, etc
We should absolutely normalize "eating the rich" discourse, to remind the elites that they are not better than the common folk, so that the system can self-correct without resorting to the violence that can break apart society completely
> The tone has shifted in a way that people who would have never be considered violent, are out buying weapons.
I think that's what happens when people feel a peaceful discussion is going nowhere. The frustration only increases while available non-violent solutions appear to shrink. The Black Panthers, Palestinian terrorism... There's nothing good about it, but I find it entirely unsurprising.
Not only people feel that the non viability of peaceful dialogue doesn't exist, it is a reality that such dialogue is not going anywhere. As reiterated by the Genocidal regime's prime minister, peace in Palestine is not an option for Zionists.
The solutions are not appearing to shrink, rather the solutions are made to shrik, deliberately.
I don't think anti-capitalist is a useful label in this context. There doesn't have to be a contradiction in being pro-capitalist and also being pro-eat-the-rich. A situation of extreme inequality that is likely to precipitate an eat-the-rich sentiment is probably not an effective example of capitalism at work.
Miltia groups, and any such group as you are describing would be or are completely infiltrated. Al Qaeda was less of an organization and more of a brand name that was taken up by different groups who had no affiliation with eachother but did so to increase the amount of donations and resources they received from the community.
There are around 200 armed militias in the United States. Some of them have a national presence, working command structure, and tens of thousands of members.
I can certainly agree that the healthcare system in the US is broken, but I don't think applauding the slaughter of healthcare executives is a reasonable reaction.
>Also that would be a great plot for a movie, akin to the Breaking Bad TV series.
If you took this idea and worked it into a script with characters and drama you'd get something close to John Q starring Denzel Washington. Not his best work, but a pretty good watch.
Indeed, or in a Tarantino movie, but in that case the killing would need to happen in a different way.
Maybe like, his own employee has her husband's treatment denied, then fueled by rage, does the justice with her own hands with a lot of red in the screen and some feet shots, of course.
This is unjust. I don’t want to know what sick conspiracy mindset led to this - I wouldn’t be surprised if the murderer’s only motive was terror and a ill-defined, horrifying blanket desire to target “the establishment”.
In a just world, sadly, this man would have been slapped with a class action case with a 1000 times the ferocity the ex-CEO of Steward Health is getting, and both he and UnitedHealthcare would be painstakingly charged for the tens of thousands of manslaughter cases he would be liable for, that families of victims would happily testify to, whether due to denied care, or the stress or unsustainable and unjustified medical debt.
That would be justice, and that would the be the only way the insurance industry would have been seriously pushed to reform.
Always seemed pretty strange to me that you can build and oversee an organization widely perceived (whether fairly or not) as evil, host what those evil-perceivers will view as Bad Rich Guy Conference in public, in a country where anyone can get as many guns as they want, and there isn't more violence like this. Seems like an unstable operating point for a society.
This is the comment that has been in my head since the news broke, and I feel like we are only at the beginning, like the pause before the first drop of a rollercoaster with the forward looking macro (political and economic tension, broadly speaking). Laws and rules only matter so long as we're all willing to believe they do.
Same here. With as many guns and victims of corporate greed that we have, I'm actually pretty shocked that we don't see this happening as routinely as, say, school shootings.
I wonder if we'd see slightly more ethical behavior from corporations if their C-level staff and board members had to routinely practice lock-down drills because they were getting offed once a week.
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I don't know how to write this comment in a way that won't land me in a CIA black site so I'll just start with a disclaimer that this post in no way celebrates or condones any violence, but I wouldn't be surprised if political assassination attempts go up 10-fold in the next 10 years. We already saw two different assassination attempts against Trump during the lead up to the election. You can read my older comments to know my political leanings, I don't like Trump. But wow, I'm genuinely more worried about the stability of our society because of increases in violent acts like this and the inevitable retaliation by the government against all people in the name of "security", than anything Trump could enact.
I wouldn't be surprised if New York passes new gun control laws because of this shooting; I wouldn't be surprised if there's a congresscritter or White House Staffer or judge who's assassinated in the next several years causing some kind of martial law situation. It's scary times we live in right now.
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>Laws and rules only matter so long as we're all willing to believe they do.
And everyone has seen it thrown in our faces for a year or so now what the blatant two-tiered system looks like. On a longer time scale if you want to count the lack of consequences for those behind an attempted coup in 2021 and a recession that harmed millions of lives in 2008.
If the government won't hold people accountable, and people are pushed to their ends, then things like this can happen. As OP stated, thankfully, it doesn't happen as often as one would think given our society. It does take a lot to murder someone else.
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Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/1958
I think people skip over this a LOT, but it's the basis for society and was long before we had the means to track down most killers and bring them to any sort of justice. Most people, even when given freedom from consequences and ample opportunities, are not murderers.
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Matt Stoller does a far better job explaining than my comment did.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-assassin-showed-just-h...
People do value their lives and liberty and (for all the memes to the contrary) the police are very good at hunting down murderers of high-value targets because most challenges the police face are challenges of focus and resource-allocation and cities tend to authorize a spare-no-expense approach to something perceived as a direct attack on the fundamentals of the status quo. Consider the full-scale house-to-house manhunt after the Boston Marathon bombing as an example case.
So I think most people know that if you come at the king, you are definitely throwing your future away (and Americans, for all the complaining, tend to be comfortable / hopeful enough that they don't want to do that).
Are they? I thought homicides committed outdoors, with a gun, between people of no or distant social connection were basically unsolvable. Even for a rich white victim. Unless this guy dropped his wallet, used an exotic caliber, or is somehow connected to a prior threat, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he is not found.
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If these ultra wealthy CEOs don't have body guards now, they will after this. If you are making millions a year, why wouldn't you.
Even the Secret Service doesn't have a great track record for preventing attempts. Their presence puts some stress on the perpetrators, which does help, and they are good at preventing quick wide-open follow-ups to a miss or partial success, but they're bad at preventing the first shot or two. And I don't think it's because they're exceptionally bad at what they do, but because if someone really wants to take a shot, entirely stopping them is a hard problem by the time they're already close and armed.
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I don't think most Americans perceive health insurance organizations as evil, nor do they condense the fault to a specific person (like the CEO). Maybe the entire system is at fault, but individual greed isn't a major failing, it's virtually expected.
On the internet, all conversations about health care will garner comments mocking the US system, but as a resident it's not like we have a lot of choices.
Propaganda of the deed?
I guess suspects will be a list of people who have been paying into United Health Care insurance who thought they were covered, but got turned down, possibly for a terminal illness, for greater profits.
Adding the ProPublica article which talks about United Healthcare specifically denying claims for terminal diseases for greater profits.
https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-i...
edit: We do not know the shooters motivations, nor do I presume to know. But wanted to add a link for context to the above comment to show context for the statement.
I'm really surprised that we don't see violent action like this from terminal patients who have nothing to lose.
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I can write that query for you:
> select * from subscribers
For those unfamiliar with the term:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_deed>
Good thing for the shooter, that's probably 10s of thousands of suspects in the area.
"When they took everything he had, they left him with nothing to lose"
I advocate for the fairer distribution of wealth in society. Not only because it's fair but because it's better for everyone. There are many reasons for this including avoiding the alienation of labor and giving people dignity. All it takes is the ultra-wealthy to have slightly less wealth.
So why is wealth concentration bad for society apart from that? Because the ultimate form of wealth distribution is war and revolution. It's way the descendants of Rockefeller, the Medicis or Caesar don't own the world. Society eventually snaps and a lot of violence ensues. Eventually you end up with the French Revolution and heads end up on pikes or separated by guillotines.
One of the messages of Fight Club is that the rich and powerful cannot insulate themselves from the people they are oppressing. Your gardener, your driver, your chef, your security guard. Any of them is capable of taking matters into their hands and they will only be pushed so far.
You saw this play out in Japan with the reaction to Shinzo Abe's assassination a couple of years ago. While world leaders were outraged, the Japanese kinda got it. You can dig deep into this with the Unification Church, its influence on Japanese politics and, if you really want, how the Unification Church is tied to the CIA.
United Healthcare is quite literally killing people for profit. Just like the Sacklers and so many others. We've become completely desensitized to this. Private health insurance is completely inefficient (look at how much the US pays per-capita for health care vs any other developed nation and then compare our coverage). We could literally save millions of lives and cut costs by getting rid of these lecherous middlemen.
So I don't condone or justify violence like this. It's simply analysis to see that this kind of thing is going to continue to happen as material conditions worsen and wealth inequality rises. In his ~3 year tenure are United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson quite literally killed thousands of people yet there's so little outrage over that.
I have the same thoughts especially thinking how we’re on the precipice of possible mass workforce displacement from ai and robots like waymo. What I just can’t understand is why anyone would feel satisfied being the billionaire in a bunker among miles of slums (picturing India) - even if the desperate folks are successfully oppressed.
A bunker is just a prison with amenities.
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>You keep saying killed, but there is a difference between letting people die and killing them.
Using dubious legalese to deny a life saving claim that happens to cost say $200,000 that you took premiums for is pretty close. If you pay out of pocket, it might save your life, but you're bankrupt, your children get no inheritance, and you probably lose your house. That's a pretty insidious act for profit IMO.
>Voters are widely split on healthcare reform and have no consensus beyond the fact that they want it. I want healthcare reform too, but probably dont agree with you on what that means. I don't that that justifies a consequentialist claim that the other is a killer, let alone reprisal.
I think the easiest step would be to drop the Medicaid age from 65 to 60. Drop it 5 years every 5 years or so. The lower it goes, the cheaper that bracket will be. I don't know why any politician hasn't suggested this, but I can guess.
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you already knew this when you made your post, but the calculus changes a little bit when there is a positive financial incentive to letting people die
> You keep saying killed, but there is a difference between letting people die and killing them.
There's also a difference between letting people die for whom you have no responsibility, and actively taking on the responsibility to prevent deaths in exchange for profit, and then letting the people whose lives you're responsible for die.
If you don't want to be held responsible when you let people die, don't take on that responsibility by becoming a health insurer.
Health insurers actually did worse than that: when other people wanted to take on the responsibility (i.e. single-payer healthcare) they actively blocked them from saving lives so they could go on profiting.
If this isn't "murder" or "killing" in your eyes, then maybe we just need a new word for the callous abdication of responsibilities that you signed up to provide for profit, when doing so results in the deaths of thousands.
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Disgruntled employee? Patient died or suffered lifelong disability due to denied claims and delay in care? Bankruptcy due to paying out of pocket medical expenses?
all potential suspects that can wrap the world, and more.
UNH CEO reaped what he sowed. To be honest, this is unlikely to do anything in the long term. In the short term, dip in UNH stonk, but recover over next quarter.
Next cookie cutter CEO to be installed will just continue the same shit. Will probably demand 24/7 security paid for by company. Costs subsequently passed down to the unfortunate people that have to pay for their dogshit insurance policies.
> Next cookie cutter CEO to be installed will just continue the same shit.
Maybe, but what lays outside their door will always haunt them. There’s no replacement that won’t have this in the back of their mind, and I suspect this is sort of the point.
From the killer’s perspective, this was probably the best case outcome.
The worst case? The decision makers of these companies fear every day. And you know what? Everyone thinks twice when they recognize danger.
> Next cookie cutter CEO to be installed will just continue the same shit. Will probably demand 24/7 security paid for by company.
He probably already had a security detail (obviously not good). For someone at his level, his bespoke life/whatever insurance most likely requires it.
It will always be a challenge to allocate limited healthcare resources. It's an unsettled question why the US accepts such an expensive means (private health insurance) of doing so.
> why the US accepts
Because we don't have another option. Your job dictates your insurance, not you, and most jobs explicitly search for insurance companies that don't end up costing them much (but cover enough that people still think they have coverage, maybe).
There's stories going around right now about how BlueCrossBlueShield is going to be dictating the amount of time during a surgery that anesthesia will be covered. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=blue+cross+blue+shield+anes...
Of course, these stories are happening after individuals have made their elections for insurance AND after the companies that would be choosing the various insurance companies to pick from would have already selected their projected insurance provider.
> Your job dictates your insurance, not you, and most jobs [...]
This is answering the question with a very narrow focus on what any one person can do. Sure, when I filled out my job's open enrollment last month, there was no checkbox labeled "Evil Corporation Insurer (y/n)", but there's no inviolable law of nature that requires the US to be this way.
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Changing the laws is an option. But it's not happening because many of our politicians are corrupt.
That is absolutely true, even no matter the government, even a non-capitalist socialist commune must allocate and there's no right answer. It can become insidious in capitalism. We have organizations like Kaiser who say "we'll run the hospital and focus on preventative care, if we spend $50 today that avoids $50,000 a few years from now" - Kaiser notably does hospitals AND insurance in a vertically integrated manner. That's all reasonable. Then a United might see "we can spend $5,000 today and patient will be healthier-ish, or $200 yearly for a medically equivalent treatment". And so they do the actuarial math that the patient will die in a few years, they calculate revenue from that patient based on how long they might stay on the plan, and find the solution that maximizes profit. So the mentality isn't Kaiser-like "i.e. we're on the hook for this patient, let's minimize their health problems to save money", it's more like "we will minimize the cost of this patient full stop, if that means they don't get care then they don't get care"
They're limited only because of poor regulations and caps on the market, exclusivity agreements of hospitals, tying of healthcare to jobs etc.
Privatizing hospitals further would not help the vast majority of Americans. Without non-privatization agreements, the average American could not seek or afford the medical attention they need.
As someone that's lived on the Canadian border for the past 20 years, I frankly think we need more regulations. Drug prices in the US are so absurdly high that most terminally sick Americans will happily drive back and forth to Windsor if it means treatment they can afford. It's a testament to America's core dysfunction, something that Canada can somehow get right on their first try but America... well, we struggled to put Shkreli behind bars.
It isn't like US public system, medicare, is great. I still end up buying my folks supplemental. This narrative of pubic vs private misses most of the nuance.
there's so much nuance in an insurance company having billions left over every year after subtracting payouts from premiums! it's sooo complex and nuanced
This case aside, I think generally in both the US and Canada it has been very safe for politically influential and high net worth individuals.
In Russia, things are different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_deaths_of_notable_R...
Because in US and Canada the "poor" think that the middle class (millionaires at best) is the reason why they're poor.
And the middle class thinks it's the poor taking handouts why they're not richer.
When it's the actual billionaires behind all of it.
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Was Seth Rich either politically influential or high net worth?
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> I think you're forgetting at least Jeffrey Epstein, Seth Rich, the Boeing whistleblowers, and probably many others?
Even if we assume all of those are nefarious, that is much fewer people over a much longer period. If you have to add "probably many others", it feels like you are just extrapolating in your favor without evidence.
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Just saw video of the shooting on X, the guy was cool as a cucumber. Racking a new round after every shot. Not a hint of desperation, fear or anxiety. He didn't even run off after shooting. https://x.com/Tr00peRR/status/1864376034465890417
I think it's this video, Twitter not showing anything for me, although I'm also not logged in:
https://nypost.com/2024/12/04/us-news/video-shows-gunman-exe...
Why did he reload every shot? Is it self made pistol? My best guess that insurance haven't paid his enough to buy glock17
A bit technical:
Automatic and semi-automatic weapons work the way the do because force of the round (recoil) pushes back the bolt carrier, which a spring will then push forward again. Shot is fired, bolt carrier goes back, spring pushes it forward.
Subsonic ammunition have less charge than regular ammunition, to reduce the velocity. This also means less recoil. Combined with the spring now being too stiff, the bolt carrier will simply not move back far enough to successfully chamber a new round. So you have to manually chamber a new round between each shot. One solution is to use a light / less stiff spring that is adjusted to the force of the subsonic ammo.
Same principle for when shooting blanks.
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Perhaps subsonic rounds that did not have enough charge to drive the slide. It looks like there may be a suppression device on the end. My first thought was home made.
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Or it could just be a single action pistol, as noted in the article. They’re not common but there are a handful of them that are relatively easy to obtain. Competitive shooters use them and it seems that Seals are sometimes issued single action pistols too.
not a gun dude, but I read that it is common when using "subsonic rounds" for quieter shots.
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Just going to go out on a ledge here and guess that a loved one of the shooter died because of some insurance denial.
I’ll just go ahead and drop this link about UnitedHealth’s use of deeply flawed models to deny coverage:
https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/ai-with-90-error-rate...
It's a major regulatory failure to allow insurance companies to deny any claims at all of items that have an FDA approved indication. Ideally, the insurance company should not be able to legally deny any FDA approved action that a licensed doctor has prescribed, with no exceptions. Insurance companies are not doctors, and they should not get to play doctor.
Very likely. It was very likely planned in advance due today being “investor day”. A person with nothing to lose at this point.
“ 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.” [1]
[1] https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/newsroom/2024/2024-11-26-u...
My bet is that it’s someone that got stiffed by UHC themself or lost someone close to them. You only have to get prematurely released from the hospital because some representative over the phone says so once for you to see this system is incredibly broken.
There's not many cases in 2024 where people get denied hospital care because of insurance.
Get stuck with massive crippling bills? Sure. Can't afford insulin? Likely. But if you are at the hospital and your coverage is denied, legally that's the hospital's problem.
They won’t be overt about it, for obvious reasons. I can tell you with certainty though that they’ll do things like discharge you early, try to send you to another facility, etc even if that’s not the medically sound thing to do.
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It happens all the time in 2024, but it takes the form of pharmacy benefit managers arbitrarily forcing people off effective medications onto cheaper, less effective ones.
Did UHC deny the CEO ambulance coverage? (they are famous as being the insurer to deny most claims in usa - 32% [1])
[1] https://www.valuepenguin.com/health-insurance-claim-denials-...
They're famous for dabbling in Medicare fraud over the years, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/business/dealbook/unitedh...
> Get seniors on your plan
> Deny them care to save costs
> Bill the US government for nonexistent care anyway
> ???
> Profit
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/us/brian-thompson-united-heal...
> A gunman, who investigators tell CNN was waiting for some time before Thompson’s arrival, opened fire from 20 feet away firing multiple times, striking Thompson.
This from CNN makes it sound like it could possibly be targeted, though there are very few details at this time and sometimes these things are misreported in the immediate aftermath.
NYPD is calling it targeted. The assassin was waiting for him outside the hotel for awhile and had a bike stashed in a nearby alley to escape.
Given New York's notorious problem with bike thefts that doesn't seem like a wise escape plan.
I don't think this ceo should be killed. However it's absolutely the case that this ceo has taken actions that resulted in the deaths and suffering of others. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if someone lost a family member due to this ceo and that turned out to be the motive.
I'm nervous about the precedent this sets, if that turns out to be the motive.
It reminds me of the assassination of Shinzo Abe. Original assumptions were that it was a political rival... Turned out to be a very simultaneously personal and abstracted "My mother gave away our entire inheritance to the religious group Abe supports and legitimized" grievance.
>I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if someone lost a family member due to this ceo and that turned out to be the motive.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was thousands or tens of thousands.
I'd be surprised if it wasn't a hired hit by a jilted ex/mistress or somebody going for assets and a life insurance policy. That's what it usually is with these rich people. Crazy pissed off patients usually shoot up the hospital and broke people can't hire a hitman.
Genuinely surprised this doesn't happen more often
I'd never condone or celebrate an act like this, but if we're supposed to just accept seemingly random gun violence as an unavoidable fact of life (as various politicians have proclaimed in recent years) health insurance CEOs are preferable to classrooms full of kids.
You know, Japan just recently had a gunman kill a very powerful person and then the country basically prosecuted the gunman but also completely vindicated them.
One can dream.
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It's unclear for the moment if this is an angry customer or jilted lover type of killer. Is it personal or is it professional? But as the insurance company with the highest claim rejection rate, they are quite literally killing their customers, manufacturing their own long list of aggrieved suspects.
Well, it was someone with a gun, a mask, AND a bicycle. That must cut the list of suspects down quite a bit...
A citibike no less
Appears to be a targeted shooting, curious to see what the motive is.
Undergoing treatment and having to deal with insurance can put people in a dark place. Even if it's just an accidental injury putting you in medical debt, it can feel like the end of your life.
I'll never forget getting denied neulasta while on my last round of chemo and having to pay $21,000 out of pocket until we argued it with insurance. I wouldn't go as far as murder, but I can only imagine others would.
Just want to caution everyone to not jump to conclusions. Remember when Bob Lee was shot in San Francisco and everyone assumed it was because of how unsafe San Francisco is? And then it turned out to be another tech exec?
Beyond the one motive we can think of, this person (like any person) had other things going on in their life. We have no idea what the motive was until the killer is found.
There isn't a propaganda machine trying to make Manhattan look dangerous, so I don't think anyone thought this was random.
There's an ongoing "all the big liberal cities are scary" vibe in much media that's been internalized by a large proportion of the population.
I know multiple people (and have myself experienced this) who've been greeted with warnings and concern from relatives when traveling to major cities... when those cities have violent crime rates far lower than the places they/we live. Like, a fifth as much or lower. It's still "common knowledge" that e.g. Manhattan is way more dangerous than a "safe" red state suburban/exurban county (LOL, very not necessarily true) and that the largest cities must be way more dangerous than small and mid-sized cities (also very not necessarily true).
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There's literally propaganda on Fox News going on right now blaming or at least connecting this to undocumented migrants.
https://bsky.app/profile/justinbaragona.bsky.social/post/3lc...
Sure, but there's a lot of speculation that it was a wronged customer. It could have been someone he works with. It could have been someone from his personal life. People who are not Healthcare CEO's also are murdered, there are lots of possible motives.
We don't even know that the killer got the right person.
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> Remember when Bob Lee was shot in San Francisco
Bob Lee was stabbed.
NYT gift article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/nyregion/shooting-midtown...
It's not working for me. First attempt said that the gift expired. Subsequent attempts just act like non-gift links without telling me that it is an expired gift link.
https://archive.is/bUkGt
This is going to be a boom cycle for the Executive Protection industry.
Will be interesting to see how institutions respond.
Ideal outcome: Meaningful steps to address the healthcare crisis.
Less ideal outcome: Parents whose children were denied coverage are put on a watchlist as potential terror suspects.
I wonder if this was some response to denying care to someone?
Desperate people will do things like that. I’d be unsurprised.
If you feel that you have nothing to lose, nothing will stop you from doing such things. What is fear of prison for someone who just lost a loved one to what they feel is a heartless bureaucracy lead by this guy?
So anyway, did you see Sony may buy the parent company of FromSoftware? That could be a real bummer if they interfere with game design.
Why has this been flagged?
because it's too real.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/unitedhealthcare-ceo-fatall...
No paywall, same amount of detail (little) - looked around but not much detail generally in any of the outlets except there was an investor day, he was leaving a hotel, shot in the chest, deceased.
I would expect spending on executive security to increase a lot.
I know it's like this but still so depressing this is the best we can do in America. Utterly garbage way to manage a core function of society.
I’m not sure I follow.
What’s uniquely American about killing decision makers? Especially morally questionable individuals? Yeah, it’s a garbage way for society to operate but this is an expression of the human condition.
If anything this is a level of action I wouldn’t expect from America.
My comment was about healthcare insurance, not the CEO getting shot
Look at recent cases where UnitedHealthCare denied coverage and the insured died. - - - This was payback.
I had exactly the same thought (though was reluctant to say it because I have literally zero evidence and hence it is 100% idle speculation)
There will always be random or isolated acts of violence. The thing that really scares me about this one is that over on reddit, there is overwhelming widespread jubilation.
https://archive.ph/8NrLB
wasn't there a data hack on a large scale previous to this?
That was Change HealthCare, a UnitedHealthCare subsidiary. The reaction to the news was similar.
Not much is known at this point, but I wonder if this is related to the big hack of change healthcare, a subsidiary. I doubt it but just a thought.
I think a lot of people might believe their life or the life of a loved one was ruined or endangered by a health insurance CEO and such a person might feel justified in such an attack.
When you think of the awful stress that CEOs put on people like
https://www.reddit.com/r/SEARS/comments/18uwjvg/have_you_int...
and think it's a wonder this doesn't happen more often but then I found out that Lampert had been kidnapped.
CEO pay is an outlier partly for their vision/talent, but primarily because they individually take the hit whenever a subordinate, no matter how far down the chain, fucks up publicly.
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A grievance will be reported upon soon. If the gunman was trying to improve society, I'm not convinced they did anything but the opposite. - sad in that regard. Good luck to the tragedy in the background, and rip Mr. Thompson.
A one off event isn't likely to change much. I think it'd take a sustained effort to make a major positive impact.
Username checks out...? ;-)
CNBC reports that the gunman used a silencer. Wtf?
Only a handful of states require a permit to buy a firearm. A suppressor is equally easy to procure, and failing that, can be machined by anyone somewhat competent with a lathe. Won't link to it here, Youtube videos available with a quick web search.
https://brilliantmaps.com/buy-gun-map/
Suppressors are not equally easy to legally procure!
Suppressors/Silencers are federally regulated by the National Firearms Act (NFA) and are treated similarly to machine guns and sawed-off shotguns (the import/manufacture of those are further regulated by later legislation).
From Wikipedia[1]: Private owners wishing to purchase an NFA item must obtain approval from the ATF, pass an extensive background check to include submitting a photograph and fingerprints, fully register the firearm, receive ATF written permission before moving the firearm across state lines, and pay a tax.
And I think you may have understated the ease of manufacturing. Especially if someone only needs to use it once and don't care about the legality.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act#Registra...
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That's basically propaganda and half-admits it on the site. There are almost no situations where you will not be buying your firearm from an FFL and you will have to fill out a background check form and have a waiting period.
The only private sales that happen are among criminals and within families. Regular people aren't going to risk the kind of charges that stem from misuse after a private sale. Certainly nobody with a legitimate business and livelihood to protect.
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A suppressor requires a federal tax stamp and (at least as of a few years ago) submission of fingerprints to the atf.
So is certainly not as easy as some states requirements for firearms.
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Don’t even need a proper gun. 3D print a ghost gun or the firing mechanism (I forget what it’s called) and suppressor. No traceability.
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And had been waiting outside for him for at least 20 minutes... certainly targeted.
Are there scenarios where the police could fail to investigate, knowing the reputation of the shaddy insurance?
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And maybe silenced? seems like professional hit from details so far.
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> The suspect is described as using a firearm with a silencer, the person said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/04/unitedhealth-cancels-investo...
Crazy, if true. Perpetrator knew many people in the area. Had to reduce the chance of raising suspicion. Although “silencers” (suppressors is the better term) are not very silent as depicted in films and tv, but do suppress the muzzle flash and suppress generated sound.
I guess in a crowded NYC, that’s just enough needed to escape the scene.
Suppressors don't just reduce the sound, but they reduce muzzle flash pretty dramatically. So it would help prevent someone from seeing the flash and knowing where the shot came from
In the interest of brevity, they're not called silencers, they're called suppressors since they don't "silence" anything like in a Hollywood movie. Typically a suppressor will reduce the sound signature of a gunshot from something like 140dBA to 110dBA. Still enough to cause hearing damage and be heard a quarter mile away.
They're called suppressors among gun nerds. But silencer is the standard term in American English.
If you have complaints about how language has evolved, you may contact Richard Stallman and ask him for advice.
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The original use case was hearing protection. The modern tactical use case is that it makes it somewhat harder to tell where a shot came from. In almost no scenario does it actually make a gunshot quiet (maybe a subsonic .22).
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Off-topic, but the US is, oddly, a bit of an outlier compared to some of our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, where buying one can be an over the counter transaction. It's weird to be in a situation where the US is more restrictive in anything related to firearms, but I assume the European attitude is that it reduces nuisance when gun ownership is more regulated at the front end.
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They are called silencers. It's the number one definition for the word in my dictionary.
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In all seriousness: silencers are legally available in most states. It just takes a while for the paperwork to go through (8-10 months).
Though they are illegal in New York.
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Do a search for 'UnitedHealth uses faulty AI to deny elderly patients' and see what comes up.
I'm not saying this is deserved, more that I'm surprised it's taken this long for someone to just up and execute an insurance CEO.
I read the title as "finally shot" before my morning coffee. ("Finally", not "fatally".)
There's a very good article published by ProPublica about the company in question. The name of the company is "EviCore" - so at least they're being relatively upfront about it.
https://www.propublica.org/article/evicore-health-insurance-...
We don't have any idea what the motivation for this murder was.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchfor...
Probably relevant
Well it’s very unfortunate for all Americans that rely on any healthcare company.
Since they will all be increasing their rates soon to cover the expenses of 24/7 armed guards, armored vehicles, etc…
Edit: Or a reduction in service quality to cover the new expenses.
As someone who endured UHC for several years, I assure you there is no service quality to reduce.
> How do they still have that many customers if their service was so bad?
Because the people making the decision to purchase UHC services and using UHC services are two wildly different demographics.
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As if they couldn't just buy that without increasing prices and still make a gazillion dollars.
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https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/unitedhealth-lawsuit-ai-den...
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No, but this is a case where incorrect AI decisions may legitimately contribute to people's deaths. Let's also not normalize the idea that it's OK for people to die so one of the most profitable companies in the world can make even more money.
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I'm not saying that you're wrong, or that I feel that killing is OK, but as others have expressed throughout this thread, it feels weird to say stuff like that in regards to a company that itself has normalized letting people die for the sake of higher profits.
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Or you could say let's not normalize broken AI in health care related systems, but potato potato I guess.
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This is not even remotely close to the "big issue" with UHG. There's probably no individual company that's responsible for more dysfunction in the American health system than UHG.
Not that I think it justifies murdering the CEO, but also such is the nature of systematic violation of massive numbers of people's sense of justice.
I think we can be pretty confident that he wasn't shot because an AI product wasn't accurate.
I doubt anyone on HN would have any interest in normalizing that practice. But almost everyone who will be wronged by these systems are going to be up in arms.
I think we'll see a lot more of this sort of thing in the future. Your car killed my mother and the law said it was fine. Your insurance company denied my grandma's claim and she died in agony after paying premiums for 30 years.
Let's just hope that autonomous drones don't become trivially capable as weapons. At that point, everyone from the President and your local police chief to the chairman of Bank of America and the local ambulance chasing lawyer who sued the wrong guy's mom after she hit someone in a car accident would be in a very bad situation.
We should really try to get this under control before it gets out of hand.
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Nobody was killed because an AI product was inaccurate. If this was indeed the reason, this CEO was killed for killing someone's family member by denying them healthcare.
You're not expected to have a faultless AI but you're expected to supervise it, to have an appeal process, and to make things right when AI makes mistakes. In other words, this is a "high risk system" under the EU AI Act, which should have appropriate safeguards in place.
> Human oversight shall aim to prevent or minimise the risks to health, safety or fundamental rights that may emerge when a high-risk AI system is used in accordance with its intended purpose or under conditions of reasonably foreseeable misuse, in particular where such risks persist despite the application of other requirements set out in this Section.
https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/article/14/
I don't think the parent poster is doing that, I think they are pointing out that when the ai products are faulty and result in the predictable deaths or suffering of people, someone out there might get angry enough to make bad choices.
Per Reddit: "One is a high powered assassin whose livelihood depends on his ability to rationalize beyond emotion to calculate the cost of a life. The other guy is still alive."
Edit: I would love to make $20/minute every day finding ways to drive people into medical bankruptcy, despair, and death, just like him, because being rich is awesome. :)
Laws are only as useful as the social contract they support.
What do you mean by this comment? Could you make your points explicit?
He means that if the state, courts and other systems don't get people justice or something you can squint at and call justice when they are wronged some fraction of those wronged will go outside the systems and seek to get even instead.
The (rare, perhaps crazy) people who shoot CEOs or armor bulldozers are what check the power of the state to ignore this part of its job.
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Not this commenter, but how I've often heard it expressed was we created the justice system as a better, more civilized alternative to putting people in holes just outside of town. At such a time the justice system stops working, as it increasingly seems to have RE: the rich, then we resume holes.
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What a dystopian world we live in where oligarchs controlling anti-trust companies deny medical coverage [0]. Am I surprised this happened...
[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-i...
What do you mean by anti-trust company?
presumably a company that is violating the intentions of anti-trust laws
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It's wild that we let insurance companies label government triage as "death panels" while for-profit denial innovation got a free pass.
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And insurance companies want us to need more or pay more for health care, not less. Insurance is regulated and the companies can only hold on to a certain percentage of the premiums.
They would rather hold on to 20% of a huge number than 20% of a big number.
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My insurance denied me a MRI and physical therapy because having 2 working arms was a luxury. Had to pay out of pocket to be able to lift my arm above my head. Private insurance can go shove it.
"Americans consume too much healthcare"? I'm afraid to guess the logical conclusion to this, but I will counter with "Americans are offered two little preventative healthcare", because in more advanced countries where that is an option, the costs are lower.
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The primary reason for the cost difference is the massive network of middlemen injected into the system, and rampant profiteering by for-profit healthcare companies.
Average cost of 1 vial of insulin in France: $9.08
Average cost of 1 vial of insulin in the US: $98.70
HDThoreaun: huffing some libertarian shit "The people are using too much insulin."
https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2021/the-astronomical-pri...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-of-insulin-by-country/
https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/comparing-insulin-prices-us-oth...
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> The US spends over 17% of GDP on healthcare
It doesn't have to be 17%, it can be an arbitrary number because the ones who decide on the nominal pricing are the ones who make money on them being extremely high. These same procedures can in some cases cost even 2-3 orders of magnitude less - and not in another country but in the same hospital but with a patient willing to pay in cash.
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>The main reason for that is because Americans consume too much health care.
No, come on man, this is easily googleable. Americans go to the doctor less than other countries, they stay in the hospital less than other countries, they have lower life expectancy, infant and mother mortality than other countries. If you want to know why we spend so damned much, it's because we're billed 2-3x as much for the same care as other countries.
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"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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TV pundits are compensated based on their ability to keep audiences engaged. The people who decide that anger-based engagement is acceptable are, like Brian Thompson, executives.
I don't think any of them deserve to be murdered, but the pundits are an odd place to place blame.
Guns are inanimate objects and cannot be ascribed blame. Gunmen and lawmakers can.
This CEO, in particular, has almost certainly taken actions that resulted in preventable suffering and death.
To some degree, that's the nature of running health insurance companies, but if he put profits ahead of patient outcomes, I think we could have a very reasonable discussion on the morality of letting people die at scale vs murder.
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What planet do you live on? Are YOU getting your information and worldview from "TV pundits"?
Corporate greed is a race to the bottom and CEOs are the avatars of that greed. Nobody needs a pundit to tell them that, they're experiencing it first hand for themselves, and you're playing a losing game defending them. You will never convince a man who struggles to pay rent and buy food that a CEO deserves millions of dollars. You will never convince a woman that she deserves to be in thousands of dollars of healthcare debt so that the CEO can buy extra houses and cars.
Human nature will never accept this, no matter how much you wish your libertarian philosophizing about the world was representative of reality. Corporations and billionaires continue to gain power and working class people are getting exploited more and more. There's a breaking point and we're racing towards it fast.
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Is that not usually reserved for people with tech or tech adjacent contributions?
EDIT: I know nothing about this person other than he was CEO of an insurance company, which I learned about 1 minute ago.
It is, yes.
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Do you really think that murdering the CEO is going to spin off massive reform of US Healthcare?
That’s the only way I could see anyone thinking this is “good”.
Won't spin off reform, and in all likelihood, is just going to result in Fortune 500 companies doing unethical shit to begin budgeting for armed protection for their top brass.
Murder is wrong and should never be celebrated.
Even if you thought someone were evil, murdering a person is inherently evil.
What line of thinking led you to make this comment? Do you disagree with any of my positions? If yes, which and why?
This is true, but only by definition of murder as a wrongful killing. There are plenty of killings that aren't murder.
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Many of the people commenting on this story have diseased souls.
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There is nothing wrong with "eating the rich", because if something were to happen to the rich, they brought it upon themselves, since they control the governance via lobbying, special interest groups, media, corporations, NGOs, etc
We should absolutely normalize "eating the rich" discourse, to remind the elites that they are not better than the common folk, so that the system can self-correct without resorting to the violence that can break apart society completely
> The tone has shifted in a way that people who would have never be considered violent, are out buying weapons.
I think that's what happens when people feel a peaceful discussion is going nowhere. The frustration only increases while available non-violent solutions appear to shrink. The Black Panthers, Palestinian terrorism... There's nothing good about it, but I find it entirely unsurprising.
Not only people feel that the non viability of peaceful dialogue doesn't exist, it is a reality that such dialogue is not going anywhere. As reiterated by the Genocidal regime's prime minister, peace in Palestine is not an option for Zionists.
The solutions are not appearing to shrink, rather the solutions are made to shrik, deliberately.
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Who needs Al-Qaeda when you have oathkeepers, 3%ers and the like with hundreds if not thousands of members ready to take up arms?
We don't need foreign groups, we have homegrown ones.
The majority of members of those groups are federal informants or agents.
I don't think anti-capitalist is a useful label in this context. There doesn't have to be a contradiction in being pro-capitalist and also being pro-eat-the-rich. A situation of extreme inequality that is likely to precipitate an eat-the-rich sentiment is probably not an effective example of capitalism at work.
anti-oligarchy could be.
America has much worse inequality than during the French Revolution, just for reference
Miltia groups, and any such group as you are describing would be or are completely infiltrated. Al Qaeda was less of an organization and more of a brand name that was taken up by different groups who had no affiliation with eachother but did so to increase the amount of donations and resources they received from the community.
There are around 200 armed militias in the United States. Some of them have a national presence, working command structure, and tens of thousands of members.
US is already captured by oligarchy and special interest groups.
What needs to happen is return of power to the common folk, away from filthy rich billionaires and their special interest groups and NGOs
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"I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."
- a wise man
“I’m not glad he’s dead but I’m glad he’s gone.” - Harold Washington
> UnitedHealthcare is a very evil company
Because they are an insurance company? Or are they somehow worse than the others?
That's an absolutely insane characterization.
I can certainly agree that the healthcare system in the US is broken, but I don't think applauding the slaughter of healthcare executives is a reasonable reaction.
I want to second sentiment condemning this as an repugnant endorsement of violence.
It is not acceptable to shoot other people because you want something, even if you want it a lot.
>Also that would be a great plot for a movie, akin to the Breaking Bad TV series.
If you took this idea and worked it into a script with characters and drama you'd get something close to John Q starring Denzel Washington. Not his best work, but a pretty good watch.
Indeed, or in a Tarantino movie, but in that case the killing would need to happen in a different way.
Maybe like, his own employee has her husband's treatment denied, then fueled by rage, does the justice with her own hands with a lot of red in the screen and some feet shots, of course.
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You can't prove the mafia boss broke the law any more than you can prove he didn't. That's what makes them the boss.
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> Are you suggesting that UHC breaks the law? If yes, why is the answer to that not a trial in a court of law?
This is an incredibly intellectual dishonest take on how large corporations break the spirit of laws if not the letter.
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This is unjust. I don’t want to know what sick conspiracy mindset led to this - I wouldn’t be surprised if the murderer’s only motive was terror and a ill-defined, horrifying blanket desire to target “the establishment”.
In a just world, sadly, this man would have been slapped with a class action case with a 1000 times the ferocity the ex-CEO of Steward Health is getting, and both he and UnitedHealthcare would be painstakingly charged for the tens of thousands of manslaughter cases he would be liable for, that families of victims would happily testify to, whether due to denied care, or the stress or unsustainable and unjustified medical debt.
That would be justice, and that would the be the only way the insurance industry would have been seriously pushed to reform.