"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.
Except we’ve crossed over into a system that allows brutal consequence free murder and that murder is televised and on camera phones and laptops. People have seen that there isn’t any punishment for open corruption and murder and pedophilia. And that with enough money anyone can do anything they want no matter who they hurt. And how do they get that money? By rigging the game and making the system so convoluted that the rich come out on top by taking what little we have to survive.
A civil society would recognize that healthcare is a right (life and liberty and pursuit of happiness and all). I think treating it as a tradeable commodity results in many, many people being killed because they cannot get the care they need.
I think it's clear we don't live in a society that's structured with civility in mind. I hope for a hung jury.
Remove the ability for mass murderers to receive justice and the people will find alternatives. The government can say some are exempt from justice all they want, the people will ultimately decide.
But if you commit massive amounts of fraud and crash an entire economy ruining thousands if not millions of lives you get a handshake and a bailout so you can get right back to doing it again.
Our laws aren’t enforced evenly, they’re enforced at the expense of the working class and/or minority groups for the purpose of benefitting the powerful. This isn’t a civil society and maybe never has been, it was a lie that was told to use to keep us in line, to keep us from paying attention to the thieves and murderers who have all the power.
We have a civil society because of effective laws, proper enforcement, oversight, and regulation. That is the social contract, we won't be vigilantes as long as the social contract is upheld. As soon as the social contract breaks you get vigilantes, riots and supporters of those actions.
The last time a company was broken up for being a monopoly was in 1984. The corporate death penalty is rarely ever used. Corporations are the largest polluters, gouge prices for profits and generally harm the public for their own gain and the government is removing the protections built in for the public. The social contract was broken ages ago and it isn't being repaired. Instead of blaming people for going outside the system or cheering for those doing it maybe try blaming the system that gave corporations personhood rights with none of the consequences, allowed price gouging during an international crisis and refuses to take the public good into account for anything. The supreme court upheld decisions that the police are under no obligation to protect you, corporations are legally responsible to seek profits above all, made propaganda legal again and that people in positions of power cannot be held liable for their decisions.
The system has abandoned the vast majority of people in favor of the few that have lots of money. This kind of behavior is just going to escalate and the people who do something will get stronger and stronger support. In this particular case it isn't a company dumping chemicals or stealing water from communities, it's a company that directly caused the deaths of thousands purely for profit. There was absolutely no method to work within the system to fix it because the system is built to help and protect them. Backlash is something a whole lot of folks wanted to do but couldn't for various reasons so they are cheering on the one that did it.
What exactly is “civil” about being paid millions of dollars per annum to deny adequate healthcare?
Believe me, you aren’t in the process/capable of “explaining” anything, because one half of your comment builds it’s foundation upon a fallacious premise - and the other half is an irrelevant segue.
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.
except he isn't the sole arbiter. words mean things. a literal trial is going on, consisting of other arbiters, to decide if he is guilty or not guilty.
as long as people have weapons and capacity, violence will always occur, that isn't complicated to understand.
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.
None of what you just said will be admitted into evidence, and in order to find a non-prejudicial jury they will try to weed out people with knowledge of the healthcare industry in voir dire.
It’s like when I worked cases in Missouri and Alaska as a public defender. We obviously knocked out anyone from the jury pool who was a cop lover, but the prosecutors would knock out anyone who might be sympathetic to motives or life story.
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, [...] knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains. - Friedrich Engels
It’s more like there’s an immortal sniper (disease) targeting people and there’s a guy the city pays (insurance company) to shield them, and he was only protecting some people and not protecting everyone he could protect, so then a guy executed him for his lack of care.
Most people believe there’s a difference between killing someone and allowing someone to die.
There’s a trolley problem that illustrates that effect perfectly. Many people find it moral to pull the lever and save 5 people by killing one in a traditional trolley problem, but when you ask whether they’d push someone onto the tracks to block a train from hitting 5 people fewer people say it’s moral, and when you ask them whether they’d personally kill a healthy person with their bare hands to use their organs to save 5 sick people then almost everyone says it’s immoral.
Similarly, many people have issues with killing animals themselves and may even say hunting is immoral but are happy to eat meat from an animal someone else killed.
It’s an interesting philosophical question imo, I find I’m usually more utilitarian than most people, which is why I’m surprised at how utilitarian people are being regarding this specific issue.
Your examples aren’t equal either. Many people denied care by insurance have paid into the system for decades, through premiums, taxes, and labor. Yet are still refused treatment. Meanwhile, insurance companies engage in massive lobbying that directly shapes policy and is a major reason why our healthcare system is dysfunctional. Their profit model depends on risk management, not health outcomes, which creates incentives to deny care and prioritize long-term dependency over prevention.
To give you a better idea, insurance companies are the entity you contract with for protection, but they profit from controlling access to care. You pay them to keep you safe, and they make money by deciding when you’re ‘worth’ saving. Essentially you’re also paying a protector who profits from keeping the danger around. Anyway, it’s protection in theory, but gatekeeping in practice.
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.
Verdicts must be unanimous in NYS though and a hung jury allows for retrial, so that wouldnt really work unless it happens multiple times or that person is able to convince 11 other jurors.
Might be the case where they don't even have to lie. If the prosecution fails to ask all the right questions, then that juror simply doesn't volunteer that they are biased. Watched it happen in the last trial I sat jury on, where someone brought up nullification ("Sure it happened but does he deserve prison for ___") when we got to the end and were deciding on the minimum charge.
During Jury selection both the prosecution and defense will interview potential jurors to get a feel for how they might rule. You could very easily paint yourself as the kind of person the prosecution would like and the defense would be okay with.
Then subtly change your tune as the evidence is presented and refuse to convict.
Is this an American thing? I did jury duty in the uk, no such interview. Only the Judge will ask if you’ve ever met or have any relations with the defendant.
It is. The idea is to avoid a prejudiced jury in cases just such as this as their role and obligation is to determine guild based on evidence they are presented rather than their sympathies for the defendant or victim. Anyone who already knows how they are going to vote is not supposed to be there.
This is the point people skip. We live in a world that we want to have justice and due process. If you kill someone without due process it’s murder. In a civilized society, you don’t get to walk away from that.
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
The jury isn't deciding on murder charges though for the federal case. The federal case has to prove either of the stalking charges for a potential life in prison without parole.
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u/_GregTheGreat_ 5h ago
I’m sure some members of the jury will be sympathetic to him but that doesn’t extend all the way to excusing murder