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community weblog
woke Zoomers and MAGA uncles alike...
...joking on their newly discovered common ground: whatever the law or the media says, in this house, Luigi Mangione is a hero.
``Our aim, in short, has been to re-examine the core values of America from the common ground we glimpsed in the response to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Then, from there, to point a path toward a new political landscape.''
relatedly, in the intercept.
posted by nobody_truncates on Dec 04, 2025 at 2:54 PM
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It comes down to the fact that the US has to get money out of healthcare. Sure, insurance company CEOs are an obvious bad guy, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. It is going to be painful, because we have built so much of our economy on bilking helpless people. But it is wrong, and it is unsustainable. It has to change.
We need to get back to people getting into the healthcare field because they care about people, not because it will make them rich.
posted by bitslayer at 3:24 PM
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Well, there's "getting into the healthcare field" by becoming a pediatric cardiologist, and there's getting into the field to rise to the top of a corporation that demonstrably puts shareholder value ahead of patient care, both ways get you rich, but only one of these was targeted by Luigi.
posted by OHenryPacey at 3:56 PM
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allegedly
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:06 PM
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You know that button
posted by lalochezia at 5:52 PM
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Bernie Sanders is also popular with working class dads.
Those voters can be won over, and they're emphatically not the same as Republican leaning dentists, CPAs, or car dealership tycoons from the wealthy suburbs.
posted by smelendez at 5:53 PM
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allegedly
Maybe the real perpetrator is still out there, biding their time one McDonalds coffee at a time, but I have my doubts their ethical code would allow them to be okay with killing an insurance exec who was murdering innocent people for shareholder value, while being okay with letting another innocent person be hanged for their act of vigilantism. And killers seem to like to gloat; look at the POTUS and his gang of thugs celebrating murdering Venezuelans for being brown people. It's not impossible that Luigi is truly innocent, but it seems less probable with each passing day, month, and year.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:04 PM
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He is absolutely innocent until the State proves him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and a jury of his peers agrees.
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:36 PM
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Eventually people will figure out that it has always been class war, and the whole ballgame will change.
posted by briank at 6:50 PM
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People have been saying that for 150 years, and the ruling class keeps coming up with new distractions to prevent us from figuring out their waging a class war against us
posted by Jon_Evil at 7:02 PM
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Even in the healthcare field, UnitedHealth Group is a uniquely evil company:
It is the biggest health insurer in America, one of the biggest pharmacy benefit managers, the biggest employer of doctors, a large health software and clinical services provider, a major payment network (Change), and a significant health-focused bank. Last year alone UnitedHealth bought or created 250 subsidiaries, over the last five years that number is likely in the thousands. It is also government-funded, with 40% of its revenues coming from the state, at $140 billion last year, mostly Medicare Advantage. In many ways, UnitedHealth Group is a metaphor for our bloated and corrupt corporate economy.
UHG should be a very profitable business. According to the government think tank MedPAC, the government program that pays UHG to serve Medicare enrollees, Medicare Advantage, overpays its vendors roughly $100 billion a year. I calculate that UGH, based on its share of Medicare Advantage, probably gets between $16-24 billion of overpayments. These overpayments come from insurers trying to only take patients who aren't as sick, so there's less to pay out. At the same time, Medicare Advantage insurers get paid more to cover sicker people, so they often "upcode" their patients to suggest they are sicker than they are.
Ripping off Medicare Advantage is just the biggest cash grab, not the only one. Indeed, this company is built on what seems to be sordid ways to to skim. The scandals go back decades. In the early 2000s, its CEO resigned for stock manipulation. In 2009, UHG subsidiary Ingenix, was caught stealing from patients. In 2014, a UHG subsidiary was at the center of the controversy over the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov, the federal ACA enrollment portal, for which the company received more than $55 million in contracts. In 2021, it got caught for defrauding Medicare, twice. A judge in 2019 ripped UHG medical directors for being "deceptive" under oath and discriminating against those seeking mental health and substance abuse treatment. After it bought the Change Health payment network in 2022, it got hacked in 2024, and then extended predatory loans to doctors who had cash flow problems due to something it caused.
There are so many scandals that my organization set up a UnitedHealth Abuse Tracker, and it's just dozens and dozens of corrupt, deceitful, or illegal acts, such as lying to doctors, patients, or the government, just in the last few years. It is known for overcharging, deceit, and denying care.
Beyond the nakedly corrupt acts, UHG is also trying or has monopolized a whole set of markets. For instance, the FTC has put out two separate reports just on pharmaceutical benefit managers, including OptumRx, which is a UHG subsidiary, for extracting billions in overpayments for drugs. The Antitrust Division has been investigating UnitedHealth Group for monopolization for years. It blocked multiple acquisitions, and is litigating against a home health and hospice purchase. I routinely get notes from doctors, patients, and pharmacists who tell me about aggressive monopolistic behavior, like steering of patients to its own doctors, violations of privacy laws, and coercive tactics towards pharmacists.
But the oddity of all of these scandals is that UHG is not that profitable. Sure it makes money. It had annual revenue of $400.3 billion last year, and $34 billion of profit. That's a bunch in absolute terms, but in terms of profit margin, it's fairly thin compared to monopolies like Google, especially because of how lavish its public subsidies are. What's going on? If there's so much scandal, and so much monopolization, doesn't that produce, you know, money? Where's the money going? If its profits were showing up to investors, you'd get more than a sub-10% profit margin.
I suspect the answer is that the money is going to the various insiders in and around the corporation itself, and doesn't show up on the public balance sheet. To understand what's happening with UHG, and why the stock collapsed, it helps to use the image of an iceberg. An iceberg is a big chunk of ice in the ocean, often broken off from a glacier. While you can usually see an iceberg on the surface, what you see is deceptive; 87% of an iceberg's mass is below water. And that's how to understand the cash flow of an immensely complex and regulated company like UnitedHealth Group. The revenue and profit are what you see on the surface, but most of what's happening is outside the view of investors.
After all, what kind of skills do you need to assemble a company largely based on corrupt financial manipulation? You need people good at what comes close to stealing. As venture capitalist Paul Graham put it, "C-level execs, as a class, include some of the most skillful liars in the world." Do you think those people are happy to steal for a living on behalf of investors, aka someone else? The answer is of course not.
From here.
posted by subdee at 7:14 PM
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Incidentally, if republicans somehow get their wet dream of replacing ACA subsidies with money paid into Heath Savings Accounts, guess who benefits from that?
That's right, UnitedHeath Group!
And if the Trump admin pushes "temporary" insurance plans (that don't cover pre-existing conditions and as a rule, don't pay out) as a "more affordable" alternative to traditional insurance?
That's right, UnitedHealth Group again!
Baby is crying, but I'll be back with links in a bit.
posted by subdee at 7:19 PM
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The cheap health insurance promoted by Trump officials has this catch.
"Even some insurance companies wondered whether this relaxation of regulations was a good idea. Cigna executives raised objections to the proposed rule, worrying that consumers would end up with a cheaper short-term plan but "find themselves in need of certain benefits or protections." Aetna suggested adding more consumer protections to the short-term plans. The largest health insurance company, UnitedHealth Group, however, recommended approval of the proposed rule "as quickly as possible.""
posted by subdee at 7:42 PM
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He is absolutely innocent until the State proves him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and a jury of his peers agrees.
People who understand there are shades of grey in life can probably understand he may be legitimately found innocent of murder while being factually entirely guilty of murder. Life can be a hero sandwich in that contradictory and complicated way.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:52 PM
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"[T]he GOP has proposed as a compromise sending money to consumers through tax-free 'health savings accounts,' which is a specialized bank account allowing people to spend solely on health care. So premiums will go up, so will costs, but some people who like to do paperwork can get access to another scam financial product layered into an already overly complex health insurance system. Yay! Also, guess who the largest HSA account provider is? Yup, that's right, it's United Health Group, which owns Optum Bank."
from behind the paywall here.
posted by subdee at 7:54 PM
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They sucked his brains out!: "People who understand there are shades of grey in life can probably understand he may be legitimately found innocent of murder while being factually entirely guilty of murder. Life can be a hero sandwich in that contradictory and complicated way."
Except "innocent", "guilty", and for that matter "murder" are, in the context of a legal trial, terms of legal jargon. Certainly i think it's very likely that he killed that guy! But regardless of the fact that he probably killed that guy, he is not guilty of murder until the State proves it and a jury signs off. Until then, he is absolutely 100% innocent of the crime of murder even given that he killed that guy.
And in an era of ever-increasing repression and totalitarianism, i think it's vitally important to be cautious not only with our language but with our thinking.
posted by adrienneleigh at 8:00 PM
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Legalistic semantic games have always been in favor of authoritarians who own the legal system. Anyway, it seems remarkably unusual to me to say he "allegedly" killed someone, as if we can just wish away the less pleasant implications of the bloody act with simple wordplay on the Internet. If we treat him as a hero then we deserve to own a portion of the deed on ourselves, in some way. It is remarkably bizarre to treat him as a hero while denying the act, in any case.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:07 PM
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It is remarkably bizarre to treat him as a hero while denying the act, in any case.
It's super not. It's in line with incredibly well-established patterns of human storytelling, as TFA observes:
Whether or not Luigi Mangione killed Brian Thompson on December 4, 2024, the popular response accords with that historically reserved for tyrannicides. The manhunt, the media frenzy, the darling suspect and his consistently dignified demeanor in the year since — all of this has entered into the deep currents of folklore that nourish the idea of human freedom from one generation to the next.
People want to treat someone as a hero for this. If they didn't have Luigi Mangione conveniently to hand for this they would invent someone.
posted by valrus at 9:09 PM
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Yeah don't give me that old chestnut about legalese being the sole domain of corrupt authoritarians. The law cuts both ways, and if the people in power get to abuse the law to satisfy their own ends then it would be foolish to not use their own tactics against them.
Is killing wrong? Of course! But now we have entered into a completely different discourse PRECISELY BECAUSE the establishment is literally doing everything in their power to make Mr. Mangione out to be some mustache-twirling villain. It's a brazen misdirection and we don't have to put up with it. We can play their fucking game too.
So i guess you can't put a healthcare CEO on trial for mass murder, even though it is actually possible to prove that a healthcare company's policies actively harm AND kill thousands of people every year. But we're still supposed to play by "the rules"?
FUCK. THAT. NOISE.
If you live in the USA, you already know how bad things are. There is no value or benefit in upholding the status quo for some high-minded ethical concern. Your ethics were murdered a long time ago, and acting like it is still possible to preserve that dignity is, in my opinion, an act of willful ignorance. The cavalry is not coming. The demons breached our fortifications long ago.
Goddamit, I really want to be wrong about this but I don't think that will happen. The only way things get better is for them to get worse and worse until enough people decide that violence is more desirable than waiting to die at the hands of greedy corporatists.
Honestly. In your year if hearts, if you think that what I'm saying is somehow wrong or irresponsible, I would like to suggest that you take some time to reflect and ask yourself why you are still defending a system that was designed to exploit and kill you.
posted by Doleful Creature at 10:07 PM
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allegedly
guys please stop it wasn't me
posted by allegedly at 10:27 PM
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Every time I hear someone put the word "mere" in front of the word "semantics," I bite my tongue hard and remind myself that I too am greatly ignorant.
—Spider Robinson
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:30 PM
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The only way things get better is for them to get worse and worse until enough people decide that violence is more desirable than waiting to die at the hands of greedy corporatists
and that's the point where everything gets much worse extremely fast. See also: Gaza.
The corporate enemy has been winning the propaganda war for centuries. I see no wisdom in handing them easy wins by creating martyrs.
To my way of thinking, the only way the US gets better is when people start actively backing a program of positive, evidence-based reforms in sufficient numbers to swamp both the apathy of the majority and the 27% crazification factor.
Calling for violence of course involves much less work, which is exactly why fascists so consistently do it.
posted by flabdablet at 1:16 AM
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Bernie Sanders is also popular with working class dads.
Those voters can be won over, and they're emphatically not the same as Republican leaning dentists, CPAs, or car dealership tycoons from the wealthy suburbs.
Won over to where? It's not the GOP, and it's not the Democratic party. As far as fixing things, the GOP isn't willing, and the current Democrats aren't able.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:28 AM
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"Innocent until proven guilty" is a sick joke. The state has been imprisoning this "innocent" man for a year—where is his trial? I'm free to regard Mr. Mangione as a murderer: I'm not an organ of the state. But the state has not been living up to its obligations of the due process of law.
Now that said, I do still have obligations to get my facts straight—I don't call people murderers lightly. But while I'm not going to mourn the death of a Scrooge, I don't doubt that Mr. Mangione murdered that medical insurance executive. What he isn't yet is a convicted murderer.
posted by mscibing at 9:50 AM
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Ripping off Medicare Advantage is just the biggest cash grab, not the only one. Indeed, this company is built on what seems to be sordid ways to to skim.
To be fair, Medicare Advantage was designed to be a cash cow for private insurance companies, as the first step toward privatizing the most efficient, affordable, and cost-effective health insurer in the US, Medicare.
I swear, if any of you have parents entering Medicare age, do everything you can to talk them out of doing an Advantage plan.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:20 PM
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Whether or not Luigi Mangione killed Brian Thompson
Whether or not he is guilty, he killed Brian Thompson. And serious people would do well to stop with the wordplay, because the ones who protect execs are taking this seriously and don't play word games.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:25 PM
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