The People Cheering the UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting

UnitedHealth Group’s Facebook post sharing its statement on Thompson’s death received more than 46,000 reactions, with about 41,000 of respondents clicking the platform’s “haha” option displaying a laughing emoji.
Holy shit.
- 57k and climbing.
  That's compared to 2.3k "sad" and 1.9k "care" reactions.
  
  That is astonishing. Imagine being this guy's grieving family, and finding out that 9 out of ten people are going out of their way to let everyone know they're glad he's dead.
  Probably, in their minds, he wasn't doing anything wrong. I'm not trying to defend him, since he clearly was doing something wrong, and the world is almost certainly a better place without him in it. But holy shit. Even when Nixon died, a lot of people tried to come up with nice things to say about him.
  
  Here are the latest numbers. I logged into Facebook to contribute.
  
  not enough?
- Yeah. What were the remaining 5,000 thinking?
  
  My uneducated guess is that 4k were love hearts
- The future is weird.
- Would this be a bad thing to catch on? Scumbag gets offed, platform for everyone to laugh at?
- This is how the bees attack you

“I’m worried about the fact that violence in the country is just escalating so much,” she says. “That this is a symptom of everyone thinking violence will solve their problems, and that I find tremendously frightening.”
I don't know if violence can solve our problems or not, but I can guarantee that not changing anything, and maintaining the status quo, absolutely will NOT solve our problems, in healthcare or otherwise.
- The violent revolutionaries added an "or else" to Ghandi's message.
  I thought in Gandhi's case what he preached was to just not cooperate with the British occupation and let it collapse under its own weight, which is kind of its own or else. Where can I learn more about the violent revolutionaries?
- I like that even the doctors and professionals they found to interview for the story went out of their way to point out that yes, of course violence isn't a good thing and this probably isn't the way, but he's been hurting people left and right, and they see it every day, and they're glad he's dead, and so is everyone they know.
- The status quo is violent.
  
  Murdering people with a pen is still murdering people.
- Biden in 2020, Harris in 2024: "Nothing will fundamentally change if you vote for us!"
  Obama ("Change you can believe in"): Come on, you know why you are having such trouble at the ballot box
- And even if it doesn't solve the problem it at least makes people feel a bit better about it.
- Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
- How is this an escalation? It's just one murder.
- Violence is on their side lol
- It will.

If a mass shooter kills a dozen people then gets shot and killed, people applaud the one who shot them.
If a CEO directly contributes to the suffering and death of an untold number of people, then gets shot and killed, why should anyone respond differently?
The fact that the deaths he caused were within the bounds of our legal system should be seen as a condemnation of our policies, not as justification for what he did. When other avenues have been exhausted, what did they think people were going to do - just sit around forever and say 'Well, that sucks'?
- What I've been asking people is - "did you weep for Bin Ladin?" If anyone is hand wringing about people mocking the insurance CEO, you should ask them if they wept for Bin Ladin.
  This CEO killed far more people than Bin Ladin. And he didn't even do it out of some misguided religion - at least Bin Ladin thought he was making the world a better place. This guy just killed thousands of people for the money. Yes, the insurance guy never got a fair trial in court, but neither did Bin Ladin - OBL was killed in an extrajudicial assassination by armed US government agents. Now, in Bin Ladin's case, capture wasn't really an option. But with the UHC CEO, it's not like there was any other way to bring him to justice either.
  If someone really just is that principled that they actually wept for Bin Ladin being killed without trial, then I will take their hand wringing about this guy being shot seriously. Otherwise, I'll have to believe that the person only objects because it was a wealthy and powerful American that was killed.
  
  And he didn't even do it out of some misguided religion - at least Bin Ladin thought he was making the world a better place.
  For accuracy's sake, I'll just point out that Bin Laden didn't do 9/11 for some misguided religion; he did it because he correctly considered the West with America at its head the cause of the state of the Middle East at the time (and right now), and especially the state of Palestine. Therefore, he targeted what he considered (whether correctly or not I can't tell you; I wasn't born at the time) the symbol of US capitalists who direct policy and profit from American warmongering. Not saying he was right to kill 3000 people who are almost all innocent along the way, or that it was an appropriate or even smart way of expressing these grievances, but it was nothing as simple as misguided religion that led him to blowing up the towers (and Pentagon, which I think was a lot more appropriate as a target).
- Definitely putting an end to his violence was good

I’m not going to say how I feel about this, but I will say that United Health Care told me 2 separate times that they would reimburse me $2,000 for the vaccines before I traveled.
Then I got the vaccines and when I submitted the paperwork, they refused to reimburse me and the manger was like, “Oh, we made a mistake, we will not reimburse you for that.”
- Should've said no take backs. Thats on you /s
  
  This genuinely made me laugh.
  
  I feel like the "/s" thing always ruins the joke. For me, it's the ambiguity that makes it funny, if sarcasm is stated explicitly it just doesn't work that well.
  I see it a lot nowadays, so my comment is not targeted at you, do not take it personally. Just a thought I had.
- Also - $2000 for vaccines?!
  
  Anti rabies was $1080 for 3 shots. There were a few others I needed since I was moving to a different country.

I absolutely don't shed a tear for this man, nor his family, honestly. They lived their best life with the money he made off the denials of those who needed help the most. They can all straight up fuck themselves. Same with the media outlets trying to chastise the masses for their corporate overloads finally feeling a bit of the same discomfort and worry that they've saddled the rest of us with.
I don't advocate for violence, but I absolutely don't feel a thing for this guy or any other billionaire with similar targets bearing down on them. I see nothing, I know nothing, and thanks to their ilk, I feel nothing.
- Oh look at Mr Tough Guy over here! Too tough to shed tears of joy, huh Mr Tough Guy! Pathetic!
  
  This was lost completely on light thinkers.
  
  Why are you so mad? You might need to take a break from online interaction until you calm down. Or not, I'm not your unloving parent!

Sounds like the US population is down to bring out the guillotine. Let's do this.
- Why not! They are trying to kill us with a smile.
- Looking like gun violence is the American guillotine.

I'm a ghoul because I take delight in seeing this happen and hope these people feel genuinely afraid to leave their mansions.
He was a ghoul because his decisions lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a leading cause of homelessness just to see a line go up.
We are not the same.
- Hey now, that's no solution at all.
  If they're too scared to leave their homes, they'll be harder to assassinate.

Universal healthcare NOW
- https://www.newsweek.com/87-democrats-support-medicare-all-though-joe-biden-doesnt-1522833
  87% of democrats support single payer but Biden doesnt. Trump doesnt either.
- Single payer or a public option would be steps in the right direction.

And yet this country chose to elect a president who has in no uncertain terms said he will dissolve Obamacare which will only give more money and power to the CEOs of shitty healthcare companies.
- To be fair, people tried to shoot him too.
- But the reason many voted for him, or simply didn't vote at all was because the traditional poloticians weren't helping either. Kind of a "banging my head against this wall hasn't worked, let try this other wall."
  
  More like "let's blow myself up together with the wall, that'll show it!"
  
  More like "I didn't bother educating myself on these two walls but when I was growing up in the 80s 'R' next to a name meant financial security to my daddy, so now that the economy isn't great I need to vote R."
  
  Yeah, nothing like trying to reign in the oligarchs who are over pricing everything by installing a bunch of oligarchs as your defacto government. That'll surely fix the problem.
- Obamacare is a pretty huge handout to insurance companies anyway.
  
  I am too young to have experienced what it was like Pre Obamacare. But as I understand it, insurance companies used to be able to drop you if you cost too much. What is the point of their existence then? What is the point of buying insurance if they can just drop you if you cost too much.
  
  How so. I always thought the things like forcing them to keep children till they're 26 and not being able to drop people for pre existing conditions were good for consumers.
  
  It's only saving graces were the payment assistance and blocking the insurance companies from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Though the insurance companies found other ways to deny coverage.
  
  Yeah, the only good thing about Trump possibly destroying the ACA is that I may provide the impetus to replace it with something better. I somewhat doubt that, but there's a chance, especially if we start seeing a lot more hate towards health insurance companies.
- If caught, this guy could be convicted of a felony. He has also shot someone on “5th Avenue”. Likely this guy could get elected president and avoid serving any time. There’s precedent.

People who claim to hate violence need to learn about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence immediately
- TIL about "Adultisim"

If they catch him jury selection will be a tough gig for the State.
- Dont think they will catch hiim, and if they do won't be alive. Bet they have kill on site as their orders.
  
  Maybe. Seems he has a few slip ups and they seem to have several leads. I think he'll end up caught or end up dead. If caught, everyone in that city will need to remember jury nullification.
- "We find the defendant innocent"
  Or simply, "Oh this is the shooter? No he isn't."
  
  Don't let the selectors know you know about Jury Nullification.

I can usually empathize, but I'm just not feeling it.
Thatcher and Nixon were people who made choices, had families, and implemented incredibly shitty policies because they believed in them (as much as a politician does). I can understand that: they did what they believed was right.
This CEO was a very well paid cog in a machine designed to avoid giving subscribers treatment they need and deserve. His company built systems and processes to maximize suffering and difficulty to avoid granting coverage to people who had paid for it.
He did nothing on principle. He helped build and perpetuate a horrible system so he could get richer from the suffering of others. No belief. No higher goals. Just money. He set out to become a rich cog, and he succeeded.
- Sure worked out for him ;) let’s do the rest.
- Why waste the extra energy trying to sympathize for one of the most despicable companies veiled under the moral bleach of Healthcare?
- I haven’t been able to find anything about the guy or his time in the position at United Health Care. Do you have anything you could share so I could find out more about him?
  
  From his Wikipedia page, some selected excerpts:
  Thompson joined UnitedHealth Group in 2004 and was named CEO of UnitedHealthcare government programs that included Medicare and retirement, and community and state divisions in 2021. Under his leadership profits at UHC went from $12 billion in 2021 to $16 billion in 2023.
  The investigation revealed that in 2019, UHC's prior authorization denial rate was 8.7%. Thompson became CEO in 2021, and by 2022 the rate of denial had increased to 22.7%. For both Medicare and non-Medicare claims, UHC declines at a rate double the industry average.
  A lawsuit was filed against Thompson, UnitedHealth chairman Stephen J. Hemsley and two other senior executives in May 2024 for alleged fraud and insider trading due to failing to disclose an antitrust investigation into the company by the United States Department of Justice and by selling stock options before the probe was made public.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Thompson_(businessman)

I made a large collection of screenshots from Facebook of people who had their claims denied by United Healthcare today if you want to really see violence.
https://imgur.com/a/yczbSDa
- Horrific!

We all were born into the social contract. The nation states of the world assumed a monopoly on violence to provide justice instead of us taking revenge. But when there is no justice, there are only two options: to resign yourself to injustice or to take revenge.

It is good to see the viewpoint of people working in health care. That they were afraid of being attacked over denied claims they have no control over, and that they see someone shot who was actually one of the guilty.

Remember, they're allowed to have conferences where they LEGALLY casually discuss new and exciting technicalities and legal loopholes they've been working on to murder the customers that have responsibly paid them ahead of time to cover treatment for inevitable illness and disease in good faith, because once they're sick, they're a liability to their quarterly profit expectations and they need mooaaar.
Oh and since Reagan and especially since citizens United, they're legally allowed to silence your voice through political bribery of both parties, good distraction though.
We can blow kisses and say thank you for killing us, or we'll be silenced. Them's the rules. Suuuper free country we got here. I feel personally very free.

I'm really not in favor of murder but its impossible to honestly argue against the idea that the world is a better place without that arsehole in it. Lets not discount the pain and tyrany that American health care companies inflict on their memebers, who count themselves lucky to have any health care at all. (Except for Kaiser, I love Kaiser).
- I dont think capital punishment is considered murder.
- The problem is that the machine won't stop. The driver was removed but another is already in their place probably pushing forward the status quo.

A cold blooded murder
Did people see how Obhma acted when Osama was killed ?
a bad guy who "deserved it " ?

https://pdfupload.io/docs/0d380e9b

As they should.

Karma is a bitch

Sick
But they'll have this guy soon. Then the story will be about him.
- If you seriously think he's going to be given a fair trial and not executed by the police during arrest, you're either way too optimistic or way too naive.
  He sent a message that brought the public together against an institution that abuses them instead of driving them to fight amongst themselves. The rich and powerful are not going to let him send another one.
  
  Thing is, most every cop has also had dealings with shit insurance providers. Being a cop didn't get their dying father better cancer treatment.

They're a bunch of fucking monkeys, jumping around like savages, scratching their armpits, and throwing shit at the walls. I don't want to live in a world where people so entirely lack a moral compass that they can cheer on murder as an outlet for their anger.
- So you'd rather live in a world where indirect murder and death are normalized. You are fine with people dying as long as it's "clean" and orderly. As long as it's always discussed calmly in the abstract, and in terms of statistics, percentages, economics, and policy.
  You want to act like you are morally superior to everybody because you're "rational" and would never stoop to dank meme about a super rich CEO of a multi-billion dollar insurance corpo.
  Well let me put it in terms you might appreciate: This CEO's death shouldn't be mourned because the world is a slightly better place now that he is dead. He made millions of dollars and lived a more lavish lifestyle than 99.99% of people will ever experience. And he did that with money he made by causing the deaths and suffering of thousands of innocent, vulnerable people via the policies and practices of the company he was in charge of for years.
  See? Cold, abstract, and calm. Is that "rational" enough for you?
- Anger is often an indication of one's moral compass. If you're not angry at the tens of thousands who die because of a lack of health insurance, or because of illegitimate denials of their health care, something is very wrong with you. This man was a monster cut from the same cloth as any murderer or terrorist.
  
  The only deference between a ceo and a serial killer is typically the class they were born in.