No jury will convict the shooter, I suspect he’ll “resist arrest” and never make it to a court room for that reason.
Saying that they are linked, then it is interesting that we are falling back on why we have a lot of regulations and protections. While you can make a legal system where exploitation is legal (as some would argue the US health care system is), there is a breaking point where it will result in civil unrest.
I am curious to see if that is the point we are reaching now.
But the CEO's wife has said that there were threats, possibly related to lack of coverage: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/us/unitedhealthcare-ceo-kille...
> In an interview with NBC, Thompson’s widow, Paulette told the network that “there had been some threats” against her husband.
> “Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details,” she said. “I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.”
And the shooter wrote the words "deny", "defend", and "depose" on shell casings that were found at the scene: https://apnews.com/article/unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-del...
These words are reminiscent of the terms "delay, deny, defend", the title of a book about how the insurance company tries to avoid paying out on claims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay,_Deny,_Defend
So, one of the leading theories is that the shooter was motivated by some kind of case involving a denied claim. Obviously, there's not enough evidence yet to be sure of that, but that same frustration over insurers' failure to pay for necessary, life-saving treatments is part of why there's so much sympathy for the shooter and so little sympathy for the CEO who was shot.
Of course, there are also other competing theories out there; it's possible that the whole bullet casings thing is just a ruse to distract people. But anger about how health insurance companies rack in record profits by denying life-saving healthcare to people has become a large part of this story.
The Internet is not reality and online posts are not a representative sample of the population. Instead, every survey of Americans shows around 80% are satisfied with their health coverage.
There’s a huge difference between how people view health care in general, and their own health insurance. According to the linked survey, in 2023 it was notable that only 72% of people had a favorable view of their own health insurance. In recent decades that has indeed sat around 80%, as OP claimed.
Again, that’s their _own_ insurance, while views of health insurance in general are quite worse, similar to how most people think congress is a shitshow yet rank their own representatives much higher.
It’s an interesting dissonance.
https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/654047/2024_12_06%20Health...
On page 5 you can see 79% are dissatisfied with the cost of health care.
Still, that’s a huge dissonance between personal experience and opinion on the nationwide state of things, and I find that interesting because I doubt we can fix it unless a significant majority of people find it enough of a personal priority to vote that way.
I want to see a poll specifically on “how much do you like your health insurance company?” Not your coverage, not your insurance, but specifically the company.
I'm pretty well-off, so I can just throw money at my problems, and avoid dealing with insurance nonsense (denials and delays). So I'm fine with my health care coverage.
I'm not at all fine with my insurance company. And I'm actually in a very privileged position because I helped select this insurer for my company.
Please don’t cherry pick misleading data.
https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/poll-finding/kff-surve...
There's nothing misleading about the KFF data, which has been going for quite some time now. If you recall (I know it seems like a lifetime ago), Obama got in trouble for lying that people could keep their plan if they liked it. If so many hated their plan, why did he pay such a heavy political price? Why would he even have to lie in the first place?
Everyone I have spoken to has no sympathy for him as a CEO but sympathy for him as a human. He is wrong and the healthcare system is broken. But this was also murder. If your sense of empathy is so fucked that you’re pro murder, you need to speak to a professional.
(If you’re struggling with this and don’t want to let hate turn you into a monster, consider the difference between believing someone deserved what was coming to them and supporting that which delivered it.)
One, it doesn’t. Two, this applies in loads of cases depending on your individual morality. (Intentionally-spicy takes: abortion providers. Medical researchers who experiment on animals. Farmers. Meat eaters. Anyone American because of our foreign military interventions.)
https://apnews.com/article/anthem-blue-cross-anesthesia-insu...
Healthcare PR is in overdrive right now because people want this story. In truth, the anaesthesia debate started a few days before the shooting.
A quote comes to mind - “I do not wish death upon another human, but I have read some obituaries with great delight”. This is one of those instances.
I have more sympathy for his family than him - he did not have to choose this line of work. Do people have sympathy for Bin Laden or other terrorists? If they don’t, do they need to see a therapist?
Anecdotally, the only people that I’ve spoken to who has sympathy are other extremely well off individuals who have questionable ethics. I also think it’s interesting that because the victim is an elite, there’s a sense of justice from other elites that is not there when a common man is shot and killed.
The whole thing is a double standard on multiple levels.
Not really. The double standard is in excusing murder as a political tactic because you don’t like the victim.
In this case, the Twitterati will hold their court. And then a real court with real people on the jury will convict. There may also be an inquiry into UnitedHealth, but it will be able to be bludgeoned into partisan death by the law and order bloc.
> only people that I’ve spoken to who has sympathy are other extremely well off individuals
The ones I’ve seen who sympathise with the killer are largely college educated, urban, active on social media and make more than the median wage. If you’re only seeing one side of this, you’re in a bubble, because the truth is it’s not top of mind for most of America.
I do see both sides but the opposite of what you mention though - the ones that sympathize with the CEO are wealthy people who believe almost any method to make money is legitimate, or support the existing healthcare system because it hasn’t screwed them yet. If you think the healthcare system is messed up then you tend to support the killer.
People of all classes sympathize with the victims. Nobody cheers on the school shooters.
What would taking meaningful action to solve the issue mean to you in each case?
Everyone who has stepped in a hospital as provider or patient knows an insurance executives job is to quietly kill hundreds to thousands of people a year and profit from it.
Of course there's oil companies, cigarettes, alcohol, guns, weapons, and a lot of other industries that do this.
Because the real quiet part of capitalism is that its valuation of human life is very very very small unless they have money. Have many criticisms of economics, but this is the biggest one. Capital owned/controlled by a human is all that is valued, otherwise you are zero or negative.
You have the incentives backwards. Nobody is thinking of the collective. The story that sells today is David v Goliath. If you want a speaking gig on cable television, you need to help turn this murder into a symbol. (And no judgement. Media is media.)
I love this dismissive attitude that anyone who fails to empathize with someone who makes tens of millions a year AND denies health insurance claims is somehow mentally ill. Get real.
I’m not saying feel sorry for him. I’m not even saying don’t indulge in schadenfreude. Where you should know it crosses the line is in celebrating the killing and the killer. Because I promise you that someone with equal or more conviction in their righteousness would similarly take pleasure in the murder if someone you find, if not virtuous, not deserving to be murdered.
Ok, someone will take pleasure in the murder of someone I think doesn’t deserve it. So what? Obviously I don’t like that, but people think all kinds of stuff I don’t like. Why should this particular opinion change mine?
Virtually everyone would take pleasure in someone’s murder. Osama bin Laden, say. Hitler, if we were in a different time and he hadn’t done the job himself. There are some people so principled they really wouldn’t feel that way for anyone, but for most of us it’s just a question of who falls into that category. Is has been a little surprising to find out that so many Americans consider this guy to be worthy, but just a little.
Not at all. Our healthcare system is corrupt. That doesn’t excuse murder. Bin Laden was offed by a state. Depending on your morals, that is or isn’t different. But those who equate a serial killer with a soldier are in the stark, stark minority.
> little surprising to find out that so many Americans consider this guy to be worthy
Worthy of wealth != worthy of life. If you think you can judge life or death for other humans, sure, fine. We are very, very different people.
I don't plan on going out and killing anyone, but I don’t see what’s wrong with thinking it’s good if it happens to certain very bad people. I suspect you have some people you’d think that of too. Maybe not, but most people do.
Since I’m not acting on it, my judgment counts for essentially nothing. I don’t understand this strong reaction to it.
My insurance doesn't cover it.
I’m personally much more interested in why people are so uncaring about a bad system that kills a ton of innocent people, than in why people don’t care about the murder of someone who got wealthy making it happens.
A narrow slice of social media is losing its mind. It’s New York. It’s unusual. But there are a lot of gun deaths in America every month.
You’re right, it’s not unusual. So not unusual that this wasn’t even the only murder in Manhattan that day. There was at least one other. Only one is getting a massive manhunt and media coverage for some reason.
Yes. It’s a lower Manhattan daytime shooting of a non-New Yorker. It’s where rich New Yorkers are. It’s where most New Yorkers are. It’s where most of New York City’s economy—including vastly most of its tourism—is. (And it will keep the media’s attention because the killer is photogenic.)
My point is that there is a big fuss being made, it’s not just a narrow slice of social media. The suspect’s apprehension is the top story on every American news outlet I checked just now. And my secondary point is that the disparity is deeply fucked up.
Weird how heath coverage is the only thing in America 80% of the people are satisfied with. It's such a nice round number, too. I'm assuming it's men only, or were women polled before Roe v. Wade was dumped?
I'm assuming this is like calculating unemployment rates, where you need to play around with your definitions. Like, services no longer being available can't factor into "satisfaction" in any way.
More concretely, if you have two pharmacies in town and one of them closes, will polling accurately reflect the 0% satisfaction rate engendered? Or is this where we start splitting hairs.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/3870943-americans-large...
> Although personal life satisfaction varies based on income, age, marital status and education level, between 81 percent and 90 percent of Americans are satisfied with their own family life, current housing situation, job, education, community and personal health.
> Slightly lower levels — between 71 percent and 77 percent — said the same about the amount of leisure time they have, their household income and standard of living.
So, ya know, lots of things that aren't super politicized.
> Why didn't this number change after women's healthcare took a massive hit?
(1) This question is asking about the quality of healthcare you received, not your perception of healthcare for others. A minority of women are directly impacted through the healthcare system by Dobbs (2022) (as opposed to indirect or non-healthcare effects).
(2) Some of the novel abortion restrictions post-Dobbs happened later? The most recent point on this graph is 2022. So it may just not show up yet until 2023/2024 numbers.
(3) The 2022 satisfaction number is slightly lower than the 2021 number (72% vs 76%). You could plausibly attribute some of that to Dobbs.
Ahh ok, there’s the hair we’re splitting. Can’t be unsatisfied with a service that doesn’t exist I guess.
In which case the prosecution will have plenty of grounds to screen for that in the next trial, that next trial will happen, and then the guy gets convicted of first degree murder. Presuming he's found in the first place.
There's no world in which all twelve jurors vote not guilty if the defendant is demonstrated to be the assassin beyond reasonable doubt. That simply won't happen, it's a delusion. Hanging the first trial would merely delay the inevitable, and I don't expect that to happen either.
No matter the evidence.
In the US there is an important distinction between the presumption of innocence, and its declaration in a court of law.
Someone with a hung jury or mistrial is still presumed not guilty by the law, but may be tried again for the same crime, because the prohibition against double jeopardy only applies to those cleared of a charge, which mistrials don't do.
In this case, it's a hard guarantee that a mistrial would be tried again. So yes, you would need consensus in a jury to prevent the conviction from eventually occurring, because there's no realistic chance of it happening twice.
It won't happen once either, but even if it did, it won't happen twice.
This is where you lose me. If you have a hung jury that means you have at least an 11/12 chance of it happening again.
Now, it's definitely true that getting a jury to nullify a murder charge is significantly different, but I'd argue there is a lot more anger about the healthcare system and CEOs making huge profits from human suffering in the US than there was about that statue, and much more generally too.
You also have a climate where a convicted felon just got made president, and another in a long line of presidents pardoning people they have close personal relationships too with clear conflict of interest. If you wanted to pick a moment where people in the US were losing faith in the justice system, now seems like a good choice, and if you believe the system is rigged, are you going to judge it on technicalities, or how you feel?
Do I think it is likely? No.
"No world it could happen", "delusional", and "won't happen"? I wouldn't be so sure.
This is like if $billionaire announced that he will publicly generate a fair signed 32 bit number, and give a specific person a billion dollars if the number is exactly 1234567. It would be delusional to think that will happen, there's no world in which it will, and it won't.
People who think otherwise are ignorant of the process of jury selection, and how straightforward it is to find twelve citizens who don't want to spit directly in the face of the judicial process (and judge) and let a bloody-handed murderer off the hook because of feelz. They're unable to separate their social media fantasies from the real world.
You're right, I do find it less likely that the murderer of a CEO would get the same kind of treatment as murderers of civil rights protesters, but there are examples in recent history of people walking free despite unambiguously murdering people in broad daylight for political reasons.
Tha kind of flexibility is the point of a jury. Laws aren't purely mechanical in most countries, for good reason. There's a lot of complexity and nuance, especially when some people have political power.
I don't have enough background here to make a judgement about what a jury should do, but I do have enough background to know that things like jury nullification are important to a well-functioning justice system.
Most people are probably somewhere in the middle.
Even if a jury does convict, he's in a state with no death penalty and the notoriety and nature of his crime will likely gain him support on the inside. Plus, all the press coverage of the trial gives him a podium...
I'd be stunned if he makes it to court.
If there's one thing that crosses almost all class and racial divides, it is our shitty medical care system.
My (now passed) uncle was in jail to challenge drug incarceration laws back in the 60s, since the opposition needed a case that wouldnt settle to reach the supreme court.
No one would touch him in jail.
I also have a basic modicum of common sense and the ability to observe my environment.
Mostly you're seeing accounts/sites you follow and choose to view and often those accounts have a consistent set of commenters. It's not like you log and the internet shows you entirely random things every time.
Equally importantly, the content that gets produced is subject to this same filter. If you think the killer was justified, or you think the impulse to justify the killer shows everything that's wrong with America, you'll be excited to go write out a banger Tweet on the topic. If you have the boring, conventional view that all murders are tragic and you hope killers are brought to justice for the sake of the victim's friends and family, it's not going to occur to you to comment on this particular one.
This whole celebration of murder thing is so bizarre. The fact it seems to be the default “way to get upvotes” and speaking out is “downvote city” is… well… disconcerting to say the least.
When someone's family gets blown up from the sky and that someone becomes a terrorist willing to use violence against the party they blame for their family members death, we may not like it but we don't pretend to not understand it. Similarly we can't pretend to not understand this phenomenon.
There's the obvious angle.
Then, maybe Thompson paid someone to kill him, so his family could get an insurance payout.
Maybe Thompson was fucking the shooter's ex girlfriend, and he wanted to mislead investigators as to why Thompson was killed.
Maybe it's a Russian operation to sow discord in the US.
Etc
Neither here nor there, but were you surprised by Trump winning in the fashion he did?
Is the implication that this kind of murder can only happen as an expression of widespread popular anger? I definitely don't think that's so. There are plenty of places in the world where corporate executives have to fear being murdered in the streets, and it does a lot more to drive accountability to criminal gangs and oppressive governments than to the common people and their interests.
I fully understand the motive and can empathize with the alleged assailant but that doesn’t mean I am celebrating the fact somebody got murdered. Being able to empathize and understand the motives doesn’t make what the person who shot that dude morally or ethically right.
Never said it does bro.
That being said, odds are looking like this dude is just a nutcase… and yet again Reddit’s hive mind will look like a fool.
People are celebrating because UHC is responsible for thousands of denied coverage(ultimately murdering common people) despite paying higher chunks of paycheck.
What do find troubling is the glorification of the killer. We know nothing about his motives, might be a paid hit, whatever. But I attribute part of that to being basically drunk on the fact that people really enjoy that this CEO -- as a faceless representative of a whole class of people -- got killed. And they genuinely do enjoy he did, not necessarily for noble reasons, but it's not "really about something else".
The problem boils down to the abuser reacting in shock at backlash, instead of realizing they've abused people into genuinely hating them this much.
CNN: "Some social media users seem to lack sympathy for the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s death"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcY38-ILjos
top voted 10 comments as of now:
> A "civilized society" doesn't allow its citizens to suffer and die needlessly so that insurance CEOs get filthy rich.
> CNN doesn't get to dictate how people should feel.
> How many people died to fund the CEO's lifestyle?
> You can see how fox and cnn suddenly have the same opinion when it comes to safety of elites
> Shut up, CNN. Your days of being relevant are running out anyways. The people have spoken.
> I love how the media, complicit in the war against the poor, tells the poor how they can and cannot express their anger.
> We're giving back the same sympathy that was given to us.
> No. You’re not going to tell me I need to have sympathy for someone who spent his life and career without sympathy for others. Not being sad a bad person died does not mean something is wrong with me.
> Finally, something all Americans can be UNITED against
> You're morale grandstanding for a mass murdering pyschopath. The CEO was a monster.
MSNBC: "What the online reaction to CEO's killing reveals about America"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zY1phtEuT4
top voted 15 comments as of now:
> So the problem is social media? Why aren't they talking about the real problem? The appalling US healthcare system.
> Celebrate murder?? normalizing insurance companies is celebrating murder, you hypocrites.
> His $10 million salary was $10 million of healthcare that was denied. How many people had to die for that $10 million. Healthcare should not be for profit. Do you get it now?
> This clip is all the proof we need that corporate media is more out of touch with the average person than ever before.
> 3:50 So you want to censor valid public opinion rather than address the root issues leading to such opinions? Good to know.
> These elite people sitting at a round table discussing how the peasants are behaving! Not once did the hint at that just maybe the insurance companies should evaluate their policies
> The only people who are surprised by this reaction are the talking heads. The media is more out of touch than ever.
> We keep being told that the deaths of poor and middle class people (old and young) is not a problem for the system. Then a fat rich man gets killed because of his greedy actions and the upper class is shocked that we say “it is not a problem”. That is part of the problem.
> So the lesson we learned is to silence people online? Get a grip. People aren’t upset that he was murdered, because he runs a company that denies care that leads to people’s deaths. “We’re normalizing murder”… well we’ve already normalized it for companies like UHC, why is this so different? Because we don’t have it on video?
> this woman says we should be outraged at the murder of a human being, ok, then why are we not equally outraged at the murder of thousands caused by the frivolous denial of life saving care by these insurance companies? Where is the outrage at that and why are those deaths acceptable?
I haven't visited twitter in ten years or more so can't comment on that.
I swear, users of a site have no kind of memory. Literally a month ago everyone on reddits jaw was agape as trump was declared the winner. After months of redditors telling each other Kamala would win in a landslide and Trump was floundering, and no one was coming to his rallies, etc.
And now they're doing the same thing, telling each other that everyone in America loves that a dude was murdered in the street of NY(with a gun, literally 3' away from a random individual)
Neo-*ism ideologies share a common myth - the myth of necessary order. This forms a contradiction that if enforced by more order will self-correct with stocastic violence. Sorry, but that's simply reality.
Go ahead and deceive yourself that you're not in an echo chamber.
I'm sure that will help you understand reality better.
Sure, it's possible to acquire my magnificent skills, by just going out and interacting with a wide swath of people in the real world.
Even, instead of thinking that you're getting any kind of signal about society when you read the same meme comment on Reddit/Twitter or whatever, just imagine you actually have no idea, even if you've read the 5000th tweet expressing the same idea
I see a bunch of people who say that "CEO-killing is wrong. Therefore they must be in an internet bubble." I think we should both admit that the consistency of a message isn't actually a good signal for "bubbleness" and that something like randomized polling on personal beliefs and perceptions or a similar study actually would be.
If you read reddit/twitter, a common statement was something like "The police will never be able to find him - no one will cooperate". "Must be hard to find someone when there are 150million suspects". Basically, treating him like a modern day robin hood.
When, back in real life, the news of the day seems to be that he was caught at a McDonalds after two random employees noticed him and called the police on him.
I felt the same way about the American election. Yet, Trump won. Online consensus on social media means nothing.
if there is a single issue that unites all Americans, this is it. Insurance is by design an incredibly evil extractive racket that only steals from people's pockets
This was not an employee carrying out orders from corporate, it’s the guy who is directly responsible for these deaths. This CEO is as much a mass murder as any other tyrant who commanded soldiers to commit atrocities.
That will be part of the defense argument presented to the jury. Intent matters tremendously in the legal system (mens rea). This isn’t random, this is very, very targeted.
Likewise, the lawyers this guy can afford after his GoFundMe legal defense fund raises millions will be top tier.
Killing poor people is fine, cheating the investor class is not.
That evidence wouldn't be admitted. There's no “the guy deserved it” defense for murder, it's always illegal to kill people.
That's where jury nullification comes in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
This is not drunk driving, ergo motive will be central to prosecution and defense alike.
B) His lawyers will be the best of the best.
C) Jury nullification.
You literally can, You have to, of course, prove the elements of the offense, but iif the defense wants to introduce evidence whose only legal relevance is proving an element of the crime, the prosecution will be more than happy to stipulate to the legally relevant fact and render the evidence unnecessary. Generally, the defense will not wish to prove the crime, though.
> B) His lawyers will be the best of the best.
That’s an argument agasinst them spending effort proving a key element of the offense.
> C) Jury nullification.
Jury nullification exists, but evidence whose only purpose (given the facts in dispute) is to promote it is, ipso facto, legally irrelevant and will be excluded for that reason.
What's interesting about this is it places jurors into a position where they need to decide whether to make an adverse inference against the state. If they have reason to believe that the defense may have wanted to present such facts but the state disallowed it, then it makes sense to refuse to convict (even if they wouldn't otherwise be in favor of nullification) so as not to participate in a show trial. But they can't actually know whether this happened because explaining why you committed a crime is usually a terrible idea, so you'd usually expect it to not happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justifiable_homicide
This assassination meets none of the criteria however. I suspect we'd find an amusing overlap between people who want to exculpate the assassin, and those who are opposed to the state applying the death penalty to convicts.
Whether or not the guy had it coming is an opinion, one I'm personally holding off on having until we have more information about it. That means I'm not ruling out thinking so, and harbor hope in any case that it might prompt other health insurance CEOs to consider whether providing better service to their customers might also be in their direct self interest. Then again, I'm not opposed to the death penalty either.
But regardless of where one might fall on that question, it's delusional to think that the state will not regard the assassination as first-degree murder, and that a jury would do other than convict in the event that they're persuaded that the defendant is the same person as the one who was caught on video shooting him in the back. That's not what's going to happen.
It does, but “he did bad-but-legal things that morally justify my client’s premeditated homicide” is only legally relevant to proving premeditation, which doesn’t help the defense, and which the prosecution will be more than happy to stipulate to rendering the evidence irrelevant.
> This isn’t random, this is very, very targeted.
That’s not a fact in the defense’s favor, legally.
Anyone got a cite for that? I want to know how that number was measured or calculated.
Any healthcare worker at least deserves to be punched in the face for involving themselves in our broken system.
https://www.wfsb.com/2024/12/05/anthem-backtracks-anesthesio...
But I agree with you, I think most new Yorkers will convict someone who killed a CEO. Also I bet they'll let go someone who killed a homeless person. I don't know a lot of new Yorkers but petty bourgeois are the same in every countries.
I'd much rather not have to test either of your theories. One thing I learned about civilian populations during the Iraq war, if you're going to force someone to get down off the fence, you'd better know what side of the fence they're gonna jump down on.
If you don't know, then for the love of whatever you deem divine, just leave them on the fence.
I would say that our leaders would quickly start to address some of the inequities throughout our legal system that allow people to be taken advantage of in egregious ways. But our leaders are not like that. They'll likely do nothing about a lot of the unfairness in the laws out there. There is in fact, unfortunately, a distinct possibility that many of our leaders went into politics to increase the unfairness.
I just kind of get the sense that we're at a point in our history where we're already sitting on a powder keg. We shouldn't play with fire while we're sitting here. Let's at least get rid of some of the powder first.
I also think it’s impossible to predict any way. But I can definitely see that nullification is a real possibility.
subsonic low calibur suppressed rounds don't cycle well. going for the slide without hesitation means the shooter has had weapons training imo.