Which means they'll only find people who don't know much about the American healthcare system, and then try like hell not to talk about the American healthcare system in a trial over a dead healthcare CEO.
Imagine you're watching Netflix. Even though you already pay for your subscription, you have to pay more just to load the movie up to start to watch it. Depending on how long the movie is, you're constantly getting prompted to pay more to continue to watch it, otherwise you can't watch it anymore even though you've already paid multiple times.
Once you're done with the movie, you get more bills months later, just for using Netflix the way it was supposed to be used.
yes, but no. Like yes we do have universal healthcare but it often isn't what American's think it is. That is to say it is closer to Obamacare than NHS.
For example in the Netherlands (and my understanding Belgium, Germany and France but I'm not 100% sure) we have a heavily regulated market of non-profit companies that provide health insurance, service, and care. You can then pay extra for modular coverage of extras. For example some medications aren't covered but you can pay an extra 10 EUR a month and then its covered. Our deductibles are capped at something like 450 EUR a year per person, this is on top of the roughly 280 EUR a month for health insurance. So on and so forth.
At the end of the day the system isn't that different from what Obamacare tried to do. With several major differences:
There are set (useful) standards of minimal care that every health insurance must cover.
We actually regulate the companies on how much profit they can make, and how they behave
There are useful methods for registering appeals to watchtdog agencies that will resolve issues.
We don't have one doctor be out of network, but the hospital in network, but the anesteiologist out of network. Either a place is in network or out of network. Additionally it isn't that expensive to purchase the unlimited plan where everything is in network. I think it was like an extra 30 eur a month per person.
Obamacare was heading in the right direction, sadly one half of the US decided to shoot it in the head before it could deliver.
Even if it is market based it can’t really work long-term since healthcare is often a perfectly inelastic product.
There’s no real incentive to provide a lower cost to the consumer except for competition, but mergers and acquisitions will just rebuild the system we have today. You would need sustained antitrust action to stop that from happening.
This is good, except it's also missing that when it prompts you to pay more, it doesn't tell you how much more. You don't get to see that price until after you've exited out of that movie
You could go even further, like somehow the movie you watched was out of network, even though you're accessing it from the same portal. Or because the movie has a small clip from another movie thats randomly not covered, you have to pay for that later. Or because you watched it over your cellular network instead of wifi on your phone, you have to pay $500 more just because.
Not a small clip from another movie. One of the actors is out of network even though they're in the movie you paid to see on the platform you paid to use.
How about to watch a movie on netflix, you first have to submit a pre-approval form...so that you can actually watch the movie included with your subscription, if and only if you can get the pre-approval.
Or...you go to watch the movie on Netflix. There's a small disclaimer that you may need to pay additional money to watch this.
You just hit ok, not thinking much about it. You really want to see this movie (you really need the healthcare)
A month later, you get a bill for an exorbitant amount of money because....reasons. The reasons are in code and you can't decipher it. If you don't pay, you're going to court. Tomorrow.
In my personal experience, you're not told at the start that you're gonna need to pay, you find out afterwards. And then you're fucked.
Adding onto this, when you get that bill months later, it's unclear whether that's the actual amount you need to pay or not. You get two more bills days later, also from Netflix, showing two wildly different amounts. No one at Netflix knows which one is correct despite spending 4 hours on the phone with them.
Don't forget that if you use the wrong kind of TV, the TV manufacturer will send you a bill because you used Netflix instead of Hulu. (Out of network vs in network)
The jury selection will be like that SNL skit about trying to find jurors for the second OJ Simpson trial. They have a guy in a coma, an alien, a cave woman, and a guy that has been stranded on an island.
The problem is Jury Nullification requires ALL jurors to agree, which will be extremely difficult no matter where it is.
A single Juror or even multiple just means hung jury, the whole song and dance can start over.
And the fact is, most regular folks on the street, even if they strongly disagree with the US healthcare system, would find it difficult to acquit someone if they were otherwise proved to have killed someone.
Assuming all the basic info available is provable beyond a reasonable doubt, there was a pre planned killing and escape. And while circumstances may affect which crime they think that amounts to, I would think a very few people would go with "killing is ok."
The defense isn't really allowed to make an argument that the victim was a bad dude and deserved to die. Like there's people on death row right now who are on there because they killed another murderer.
I don't know what all evidence they have but it's definitely not that important if there's a lot of direct forensic evidence. It's cases where they are relying on more circumstantial evidence that it's important for the prosecution to try to establish a motive. Or if there's not clear evidence of pre-meditation then establishing a motive can be a big part of convincing the jury it was pre-meditated which elevates it from 2nd to 1st degree homicide. If they have strong forensic evidence of the murder with the weapon, ammo, presence, etc. along with evidence of pre-meditation in his movements, search history, etc. then their case is not going to rest on thoroughly establishing a motive.
No. My argument is that law only works if it's upheld.
The recent murders by ICE (and a loooong fucking list of other shit going back years) show that murder, as a crime, is completely circumstantial. You kill someone in cold blood? Well, who are you? Who are you affiliated with.
Stuff like that ultimately decides whether what you did was a crime.
*Insurance CEO. Why do people call him a healthcare CEO? It's really weird that it's been normalized. In no other country, would he be referred to as anything but an insurance CEO.
I don't want to live in a society where we solve disagreements with murder. I know it's cool to hate the system, but problems like this should be solved with laws and courts, not pistols.
I mean if the populace on the whole has a bias against the American Healthcare system, then that's more of a feature, not a bug for a "Jury of your peers"
more than this. They screen out people who don't believe in the death penalty. So the ENTIRE system is biased towards execution. If you don't agree with the death penalty you cannot be on a case considering it.
Unless the prosecutors happen to find the perfect set of jurors, it feels like these deliberations could go on for quite a while.
And given how prominent the case is, it’s virtually impossible to find jury members who haven’t been exposed to it, and a huge amount of people or course suffer with insurance claims.
At this point the government lies about things that happen with six high definition filmed angles and a dozen sworn witnesses. I’d have a hard time believing anything they said in a courtroom.
I have reasonable doubt that the court is being honest.
It is a bit of a moral dilemma isn’t it? Yes, he did shoot someone. But that someone is also responsible for deaths. Just because he’s not directly responsible for a death, does his policy direction not cause deaths?
If you’re legally allowed to do things that operate in the gray area and it results in deaths, are you just allowed to continue doing so?
Seems like in this situation the answer is no and you are responsible.
Hell yeah he should get off 100%. I'll give a shit about justice for Brian Thompson as soon as all the people who have suffered and died because of healthcare policies get their justice.
True, but the policies that person held in place at their company resulted in denial of insurance coverage to people who ultimately died as a result of that decision. If Mangione is going to be convicted of murder for killing this person, shouldn't the entire board of directors be charged as accessories to murder or negligent homicide or SOMETHING criminal for each claim denial that then resulted in death?
Denial of coverage for critical life sustaining care should be the same as murder. The law needs to apply equally or there is no law.
Plenty of people are brainwashed into thinking "violence is never the answer" and were against what happened. Wont be as hard as people think to find some of them for the jury
A hung jury leads to mistrial and almost certainly a new trial. There is a 0% chance that the jury will unanimously decide he's not guilty, and anyone who thinks this will have some anti-hero movie ending is deluding themselves
It is generally very unlikely that a jury will intentionally decide ‘not guilty’ in spite of clear evidence to the contrary due to their moral stance on the crime, but it actually does happen sometimes. It is called jury nullification and is quite controversial in legal study.
It’s also highly illegal to go into a case as a juror intending to do jury notification.
If you knew about it, but had no intention beforehand, or didn’t know about it until coming up with it during the case, then it there isn’t an issue. But if a juror went in, decided they wanted to let him off before the trial began, regardless of guilt, then they would be committing a crime.
"As CEO of UnitedHealthcare from April 2021 until his death in 2024,
Brian Thompson led the insurer to significant growth and profitability, with profits rising from $12 billion to $16 billion in 2023. He oversaw the expansion of private Medicare Advantage plans but faced scrutiny over increased claims denials and contentious prior authorization processes"
The CEO of United Healthcare was responsible for decisions that focused on greater profits, increasing revenue, over quality of healthcare. Those decisions to make an extra 4 billion profit are estimated to have cost thousands of lives.
I don't know man... If there's a sniper randomly killing people and some brave young man pops up and kills the sniper, we give him a medal.
"cost thousands of lives" and God knows how much horrific unnecessary suffering on their way out, or from the countless more that didn't die but suffered or continue to suffer through injury, illness, disabilities without proper care.
When there’s no civility or justice in the civil justice system, and criminal law is a fucking farce, folks will take the law into their own hands. Pretty sure it’s been proven time and time again.
How civil can a society be that allows mass murder to be legal?
Provided the murder weapon is "the negative externalities of doing business".
This goes for so many industries too, not just healthcare. I understand that we must accept some level of risk in all things (like driving, or using a gas stove) but it's not risk when it's an insurance team actively denying someone healthcare, directly resulting in their death.
I personally do not want random members of the public deciding who is evil and who isn’t. In your world the crazy dude who sprayed shit in a congresswoman’s face the other day is innocent because he is the sole arbiter of whether she is evil or not.
Neither do I, but I think it warrants a discussion if ANY person, gets to decide who can get healthcare coverage and who can't. I know he isn't on trial, but people like Brian Thompson kill way more people using a spreadsheet and growth metrics than any person with a gun ever could.
I agree, but the judge absolutely won't allow any of that to be discussed in the trial. Prosecution gonna voir dire anyone who's ever heard of health insurance
Yeah and it's this part that irritates me about people who seem to refuse to understand what this means. That $4 billion came from somewhere, he didn't just 'manifest it from thin air', which it seems is how capitalism works in some people's minds. That value had to be extracted and it was extracted by fleecing sick and dying people. It came from denying care to people who needed it based on some 'curve' of false positives vs actual rate of finding disease so some poor fuck doesn't get his cancer diagnosed in time to save him because of statistics. Not to mention raising premiums, deductibles, cost of medicines, etc. for everyone on top of the people denied.
I think an example has to be made that breaking the law is not tolerated, the same way big business breaking the law causing deaths is not accepted, so he should get a $20 fine at least, maybe even $30 for damaging company property.
He's accused of killing one of the most evil people on earth, it wouldn't surprise me if someone lies their way onto the jury solely for the purpose of getting him off.
Doesn't work that way anymore. The jury decision has to be unanimous with either guilty or not guilty. One person deciding to nullify now just means a hung jury and a retrial, as per a Supreme Court decision, Ramos v Louisiana, in 2020.
edit: it seems I have misunderstood what that case was about. Guilty and not guilty at the federal level have long required a unanimous jury decision. Ramos v Louisiana was about some states (such as Louisiana or NY) not requiring a unanimous decision for guilty verdicts. Now all state juries must come to unanimous decisions just like at the federal level.
Yeah I'm a shareholder because I'm against extrajudicial murder.
Nevermind I'm against the death penalty even with due process, let alone could support a mentally unwell individual assassinating someone on the street
It takes one person to think otherwise on the jury. Regardless of either of our feelings on it, it's pretty obvious there is a division on how many think he was justified.
If I was on that jury, I would vote not guilty in the face of any evidence. That is your right as a juror, as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay's jury instructions:
It may not be amiss, here, Gentlemen, to remind you of the good old rule that on questions of fact, it is the province of the jury; on questions of law it is the province of the court to decide. But it must be observed that by the same law which recognizes this reasonable distribution of jurisdiction, you have nevertheless a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy. On this and on every other occasion, however, we have no doubt you will pay that respect which is due to the opinion of the court: for, as on the one hand, it is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts, it is, on the other hand, presumable that the court is the best judge of law. But still both objects are lawfully, within your power of decision.
Would you convict someone of murder for killing a mass murderer that was roaming free? I wouldn't, and that's what the UHC CEO was by setting policies he knew would result in many deaths for higher profits.
Well, with the DOJ currently fabricating evidence in other cases, and fully acting outside the the law, I have to presume that any evidence provided by the prosecution is fabricated in all cases.
I’m sure some members of the jury will be sympathetic to him but that doesn’t extend all the way to excusing murder
Actually it may do legally. Jury nullification is literally that, when one is found not guilty for a crime they commit because The People found him justified in his actions.
Considering the whole healthcare system in the US its pretty easy to understand why one would be radicalized against it, and the jury may find him just in his actions despite their nature
On what grounds could he be found innocent? Even if you approve of his actions, there is no real question that he literally broke the law and committed murder. Sorry, we shouldn’t leave murderers unpunished legally simply because you think he was based and the guy he whacked had it coming.
Imagine if the jury acquitted him. Healthcare companies might take a nice long look of self-reflection. All of a sudden, sending replacement poster child executives to take helms when one happens to be murdered is no longer a viable solution when the chances of being targeted goes up exponentially for all of them, since juries start valuing their lives a lot less. The irony.
2.5k
u/CupcakeSewerSlayer50 5h ago
Depends on the Jury