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Brian Thompson’s case shows systemic vs direct violence: one hidden as “civilized,” the other viewed as evil.
Technology and bureaucracy weaponized for murder and suffering on a massive scale, yet his killer is condemned for directly responding with the same violence Thompson’s actions produced. I only feel sorry for the people who are suffering or have passed away due to the healthcare industry.
I’ve heard the term “social murder” recently I’m relation to this. He might not have personally used a weapon against them but anyone who had died as a result of denying coverage for a life-threatening condition has been murdered socially.
but did you hear he’s a husband and father?
Edit: was*
Edit: In case it wasn’t clear, this is a joke. Obviously.
Which means he should’ve had more empathy for the families he’s denied medical care for, right?
I saw someone post a pic of his family trying to get people to empathize with him, and to be honest it just makes me think even less of him.
I don’t really know how someone can love their kids, but deny healthcare to other children. He’d be less of a monster if he was just completely devoid of humanity all the time instead of when he’s just clocked in for work.
I don’t really know how someone can love their kids, but
Did he? Just because he had a family doesn’t mean he gave a shit about them…
I mean, fair enough. Kinda hard for me to remember people can actively feel contempt or just complete disinterest for any kid, let alone their own.
Also there’s a “love” that’s prevalent among the affluent that isn’t love at all.
Where children are seen more as and expected to fill the role as familial assets of the patriarch, more an extension of the parent’s legacy. No appreciation for the kids themselves as individuals, but attempted clones of the parents, and met with disdain when they fail to fill that mold as a failed investment.
The Trumps and Murdochs come to mind, and among extreme wealth, thats the rule not the exception.
It’s not contempt at the outset or disinterest, they see their children as assets, no different than stock or capital, to play to increase the reach of THEIR leverage, even after they’re dead.
As a parent, I have a great deal of contempt for parents that expect their kids to further their own interests or expect/demand they become little clones of them.
Kids don’t owe you shit, you owe them.
This is the thing, exactly! It’s called The Banality of Evil. When Adolf Eichmann was being tried in Nuremberg for war crimes he committed in Auschwitz, it was widely remarked on about his lack of ‘evilness’. The dude seemed like a mild mannered accountant, and by all means was, but he helped enact one of the most heinous and calculated acts of genocide in all of history.
Monsters are easy to point at and shudder, monstrous humanity is far harder to accept let alone vilify. This piece of shit CEO is firmly in the Eichmann camp of evil and we should fucking celebrate he’s dead.
I’m a husband and father. I wouldn’t disappoint them by killing thousands of people and getting shot for it. It’s a reason to not do evil things.
The wife chose marrying a psychopath. She’s no better. The kids will be somewhat better off being raised by only one piece of shit instead of two.
Did his wife and children know what he did for a living?
If anyone doesn’t know what the point of my question is, I can only direct them to go watch The Zone of Interest (2023).
Man slaps dead parasite sucking the blood of humanity
My condolences to his family, even though no insurance company ever gave my family condolences when they let my mom die
fuck it we ball
Reddit Admins are watching their site burn because basically everybody is supporting and condoning the killer, and they don’t like that. Its quite funny.
Mods going nuts banning people and coming back tomorrow to a completely empty subreddit.
Corpos gonna corp
We’re just training their AI model
It’s such a weird place to be.
We are all trying to be respectful. A person has died, and that is a horrible thing. But this guy runs a company that has cause so much suffering to so many people. He may not be directly responsible for pain, suffering, and likely death, but if he had run his company more fairly, none of that would have happened.
When people made jokes about trump nearly getting killed, people kicked off and said it was abhorant to wish death upon him (despite him being a foul human being)
But I really want to just say this guy deserves it and tell people to fuck off trying to make me be respectful of this terrible person.
Somebody validate my anger.
Somebody just tell me i can hate this individual and not be bothered that he died.
Fuck that dude. You can be happy when bad people die. It’s normal to laugh and even cheer when someone that has caused the death of many people gets what is due to them. You just feel odd about it because we aren’t used to seeing rich and power people face consequences.
I wish more of these public and mass shooter actually use their energy and focus on a positive act for change. Our collective empathy has been stolen in this current system. We aren’t supposed to bat an eye when kids get shot in school, but NOW it’s a problem and we shouldn’t joke. Fuck off with that noise.
Somebody validate my anger.
I work at a children’s hospital, a couple times a week United Healthcare denies treatment that could allow some of my pediatric patients with severe mobility issues to do things like run, or play outside with their friends. All because having a somewhat normal life isn’t medically necessary, or isn’t a covered benefit, or were not a preferred provider…and the nearest in network provider is 6 hours away.
Every time I have to explain to a parent that Medicaid would have paid for this, but mom and dad worked a little too hard and so they don’t qualify for state care… I die a little on the inside.
So I for one don’t really care about being respectful, and can reassure you that you shouldn’t feel the need to either. People who show no humanity towards disabled children are not human in my book.
Today has been cathartic and I’m going to have a little pep in my step on my walk home.
Its because Republicans made healthcare suck on purpose
They’re in cahoots. Corporations wrote and paid for the laws those “representatives” passed.
think of it this way: The dude caused a TON of death. The assassin saved people’s lives.
More like avenged. The next CEO probably won’t change things.
America has more bullets than psychopaths.
He already changed things. Anthem BCBS decided to drop limiting anesthesia during surgeries. They were planning on implementing it next year, but now decided to drop it for some reason.
Not even the same company and he made some changes.
Will the next CEO be bullet proof?
well there can’t be more CEO in line than the amount of deaths the company caused
I have as much sympathy for him as his company has shown me
We are all trying to be respectful
Speak for yourself, I and many others are doing our best to make it clear we offer 0 respect at all
I already have been called evil for simply not having any empathy toward this man. Apparently there are some that believe even the worst people deserve empathy despite being shown time and time again they don’t care about the sick and dying over making a profit. I never advocated for violence or murder, I never cheered or claimed more should die. But I’m the evil one for not caring about this guy somehow. I honestly don’t know if humanity has a chance with all of this corporate dick sucking.
It is because they are insulated from the damage these people leave in the wake of “doing their jobs”. If I or you sent their family into financial ruin by extorting their health/existence they’d be whistling a different tune.
my only concern is that this will embolden trumpers attacking libs.
Most of us couldn’t care less about this guy! I for one thinks he deserved it and let this be a warning to other corps doing the same shit! The people have to take the power back and I support these actions!
fleeing on a rented e-bike
“Thheeere goooes my hero, Watch him as he goes”
Perhaps the 9mm pistol is the guillotine of the next American revolution.
TBH I always wondered why people were shooting up malls and schools instead of the people who actually cause the societal conditions they’re upset with
Edit: to be clear I’m not promoting this, it just never made sense to me
Billionnaires control the medias and social medias. They are purposely creating divides between the population to avoid being the target.
It’s called stochastic terrorism or stochastic violence. Essentially people are made increasingly angry and violence prone. Either the object of their anger is inaccessible or too diffuse to actually target.
As a result, random acts of semi-targetted violence become increasingly common. If your objective is to create an atmosphere where people have a higher baseline level of fear, which can drive irrational reactionary behavior, it does wonders. It’s also great at increasing violent acts against people you dislike without explicitly calling for it.Thank you! TIL
The people who deserve it are harder to find and rarely in the same place at once.
CEO’s? Likely at home, shareholder meetings, board meetings, on their boat, private jets (which can be tracked), at their office, speaking at corporate events (annual sales kickoffs, etc.). It would take some work, but not that hard.
Maybe now they’ll finally support remote work!
Because that gets more attention and takes less effort.
Does anyone know how many people his company screwed over by denying insurance claims or how many suffered and died due to not paying enough or not reading the fine print, i won’t celebrate his death but i can’t say i’m sad that he’s gone or anyone like him for that matter.
It’s okay, I’ll celebrate his death for you
I am sure the shareholders he enriched celebrated every earnings call. His leadership led to untold number of deaths for profits.
Mesmerizing!
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
The writing has been on the wall since the ACA got rewritten by these same companies. Instead of reforming the system to making it more fair these corporations were prioritized over us and our health.
There is no path to justice, all the evil shit they do has been deemed lawful, so it’s not like a lawsuit will do anything and it’s certainly not going to change anything for anyone else.
And now with the incoming administration teasing to remove even the smallest of teeth from the aca, it really does feel hopeless. The government is protecting profit over people and I’m surprised it took so long for somebody to finally snap. In an ideal society we would have reforms before stuff like this started happening
It’s one of those situations where big money will use illegal or unfair means to sway or change law, then tell the people to “play by the rules” or “do it the right way” after having changed it to be heavily in their favor. Most people will try to do it the “right” way too as it’s the only realistic option. Until it is so unreasonable that other methods end up being more palatable.
It’s almost like unlimited corporate power and greed leads to more instability, who woulda thought.
But corporations are people! Think about McDonald’s rights!!
Right, like this person could have been a great dude on a personal level but his position at United health care is pretty evil and implicates him in that evil.
Would certainly be exciting if the USA kicked off a movement here.
Well, I don’t think you can separate his “personal” and “business” lives. I don’t think you can be a great dude and go to work instituting policies that kill people for money.
Maybe he was funny and kind to people he knew, but he wasn’t a different person from the person he was professionally.I wish you could have done it like 2 months ago though.
I hope the accelerationists were right and I was wrong, because we’re accelerating.
What I saw online (take with grain of salt) is UHC has 29,000,000 customers, and a 32% denial rate (the highest in the industry), so that gives us a possible 9,280,000 people denied if there were 1 claim per person a year.
That is obviously super rough guess, cause not every customer makes a claim a year, some may make none and some multiple for the same thing that could repeatedly get denied.
Shame that only damage from the first bullet was covered. Every shot after that was a pre-existing condition. Maybe he would have made it.
If they find the guy, I hope the jury nullifies.
He’s not going to be arrested by the cops. He’s going to be killed by the cops.
While I agree that is a likely outcome, he has the advantage of being white. Historically, as long as the gunman got away from the scene ✅, isn’t actively brandishing a weapon ❓, and is white ✅, the
copsracist thugs with badges just arrest them, and possibly buy them McDonald’s on the way to the precinct.As someone who visually presents as much whiter than this guy, I don’t like that is where we are at. I just recognize that my “natural camouflage” has allowed me to verbally berate
copsracist thugs with badges all over this country without me even being arrested. This is just the reality of how the thugs with badges operate.
I swear I read “finally shoot” and was like based CNN!
His company is offering a reward of one free appeal of a claim denial for information leading to his arrest!
$10k is nothing compared to medical bills.
I refuse to celebrate the man’s death. That just doesn’t sit right with me.
However, I’ll climb on my soap box long enough to point out that first, an insurance business model is fundamentally incompatible with healthcare. It does not work on basically any level and the need for profit will always be in conflict with the need to provide high quality healthcare.
Second, this conflict between the need for profitability and providing healthcare means that most of the health insurance industry is built on a foundation of ethical compromises. For profit health insurance companies like UnitedHealth are just straight up immoral. Any business that has to give loyalty to shareholders at the expense of anyone’s life and health is immoral. Not to mention the incredible amount of work health insurance companies have done to effectively rig much of the American medical system for their own benefit.There are lots of corporations that do lots of bad things but I would classify for profit health insurance as a special kind of evil.
As much as they like to pretend they’re the good guys, the good guy doesn’t make it their sole mission to extract as much money as possible from their customers before they die while doing the bare minimum to keep them from dying.
Long way of saying, my condolences to the guys family. Having your husband/father/etc. assassinated in the street has to be awful. At the same time, screw UnitedHealth. They’re a bunch of worthless blood sucking vampires.
My feelings are exactly what they would be if the head of a vicious mafia was just assassinated. Probably because the head of a vicious mafia was just assassinated.
How evil does a person have to be before it is acceptable to celebrate his death? This man devoted his life to profiting from human suffering. The fact that the law was on his side does not excuse his actions; it simply means that he worked within an evil system.
Hitler level is sure cause for celebration.
How about all the wealthy people who invested in his regime. Can we hate them too?
I think the ideal outcome is the person changes and stops hurting people. Though in america its pretty unlikely to happen due to greed and ego.
And if that outcome isnt guaranteed, or even likely, is violence that may save many justified?
It’s a real-life trolley problem…
Feels a lot easier to me since in my mind the analogy becomes “do you kill the dude that’s pulling the lever to a track with many thousands on it instead of the track with some money on it so you can see if the next person will change the lever back”
Those are different questions. Ideal outcome vs what’s most likely to happen. Honestly I have no idea, he literally could have been trying to change the system the whole time he worked there and I would have no idea.
What is good is all the amplified discussion about insurance companies and how they kill people. That wouldnt have happened without a catalyst.
Feelings on the topic should allow for nuance and shades of grey, not everything is black and white. Im in OPs camp… Dont celebrate the death of any human, and the amount of damage to peoples lives the company this guy helmed does is unfathomable. You are allowed to hold both opinions.
If the death of a human saves the lives of a bunch of humans, isn’t it then a celebration of life?
No, and this saves no lives, utilitarianism is bad philosophy, grow up.
I’ll celebrate for the both of us.
I don’t celebrate that this needs to be done, but I do celebrate it being done. When they destroy any sense that the justice system will see justice done to them, it requires people to seek justice in to her means. It’s their fault. They can choose to repair the system and remove their advantages whenever they want. Until them, I welcome justice.
My condolences to the victims of the victim. Sorry but I couldn’t disagree with you more. The rich represent despotism with no recourse for all the injustices they inflict upon the rest of us, and it shows why the cycles of Anacyclosis are real and persistent throughout human history. Business leaders have no virtues, only greed and profit motive. Given the context of history and what happens to despots as they get worse, they’ll be lucky if there aren’t mobs beheading them and leaving their heads on spikes adorning the walls of Wall St for all to see.
That’s where this goes next if the greed and suffering continues.
I’ll celebrate for you. His death made humanity a touch better, on the whole.
That’s a shootable face if ai ever saw one
Oh so chatGPT did it? Actually that makes sense they were announcing some new features
First thing they’re gonna do is trace cellphones connected to nearby towers and cross-reference any new signal.
Hellova task in Manhattan to begin with. And people doing this job are likely not going to be clvery motivated.
Hope he was smart enough to not bring smartphone.
Everyone’s assuming that this was a patient who was denied coverage or family member of a patient who was denied coverage, the thing is this sort of person will have made enemies in the corporate world as well.
For all we know this was a professional hit.
Unlikely. Dude literally went to a Starbucks before the shooting and wrote a message in the bullets. That doesn’t scream “professional” too me
Detectives investigating the shooting reportedly found shell casings with the words ‘depose’, ‘deny’ and ‘defend’ inscribed on them.
I just wanted to say it gave me a chuckle how it sounded like you meant he wrote on the bullets at Starbucks. Like it was just a thought that occurred to him and he needed a place to sit down and write on them with a sharpie he borrowed from the baristas.
He could have for all we know! He seems like the kind of guy who would put some real thought into writing his Christmas cards :>
The guy was manually recocking a silenced pistol. Unlikely he did brought a phone.
Its my understanding that subsonic ammo sometimes won’t have enough gas to move the slide fully and must be done manually like this
That’s how my silenced .22 behaves with subsonic. LRs refeed fine.
Maybe we could have patched him back together, but all the nearby hospitals were out of network.
