Dated: 2024-12-05. Added: 2024-12-05. Alternate title: “After UnitedHealthcare CEO’s Killing, Americans Express Frustration With Health Insurance Industry”.
But that did not stop social media commenters from leaping to conclusions and from showing a blatant lack of sympathy over the death of a man who was a husband and father of two children.
Don’t be clueless, NYT. Similar to the blatant lack of sympathy shown by corporate execs over the damages their policies cause in the pursuit of infinite increases to the bottom line? I mean, after a few tens of thousands of collective years of life lost I guess human suffering is just a statistic… The C-suite is well paid enough to not waste too much concern over it. In fact, they probably get paid more for less money spent on those liabilities. All those people denied care were wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons…you get the idea. His life is NOT worth more than those he traded for shareholder approval.
It’s crazy that the media is judging the public so harshly. Who do they think is reading? Lol
Well to be fair, the advertisers have always been the real customers. Most media loses money in distribution.
I more or less stopped paying attention to NYT in 2002-2003 when they so gleefully cheerlead the Iraq2 campaign. And I feel dumb it took me that long. They don’t exist to do anything except manufacture consent.
I will never forgive their complicity in the Iraq war and I treat anyone who reads the NYT without simultaneously harboring a constant distaste for it as fundamentally unserious in their practice of educating themselves about reality.
This assassin has created more solidarity over working class issues then the Democrats could, even with 1.5 billion dollars. Fascinating
Sounds like we’ve found what the Democrats should add to their playbook.
Who wants to go first?
biden should pardon him; whats one more pardon for a criminal with a gun after the first one?
It won’t happen but that’d be such a fucking what the entire establishment would melt.
I’d pardon him for the lols, at Bidens age you gotta live a little.
Plain old murder is a state crime. The governor of New York would have to pardon him.
its also a federal crime. both would.
Nope, it would be only if it happens on federal territory, like Washington DC, national parks, etc.
think you’re confusing federal prosecution with federal crimes. I assure you the gunman definitely violated multiple federal laws during the shooting for which biden could pardon him. now stfu and enjoy the joke and stop analyzing everything to death. you’re no fun at parties im sure.
Pretty sure once he crosses state lines it’s federal. I could be mistaken though.
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I’m pointing it out because shit like this is why Trump got elected. People keep expecting the Democrats do things they don’t have the ability to do because they don’t understand how the government works.
‘Ezio has entered the chat’
Millions of Americans have trained to do this.
The training was abhorrently bad, very easy, completely unrealistic and provided no real skills.
But they have trained.
If these CEOs couldn’t walk down the street without some moron in an assassin creed costume showing up. I would be so happy. They don’t need to actually get harmed but they should live in a state of constant paranoia. It’s the least they deserve.
They don’t need to actually get harmed
As long as they continue to perpetuate suffering, yes, they do.
Oh, I certainly wouldn’t cry about it. I’m just willing to settle for them living in fear.
Yeah, Step 1: Jump off of a tower into a bale of hay.
By assassin you mean the one who got the bullets, right?
The assassin is the one who did the shooting. The one who got shot is the mass-murderer
Assassination implies a targeted strike.
Systematic Mass killers are not assassins.
No, he didn’t assassinate anyone, just caused them to die. He would have had to know who they were and cared enough to specifically target them for it to be assassinations.
C’mon man, the hate was obviously there before the killing, it’s just that it took a murder to get the hacks at the NYT to cover it.
I wonder how many deaths that ceo is responsible for…
Come on now. You can’t honestly expect a poor innocent billionaire who’s only goal in life was to line his pockets and the pockets of the people he was responsible for with every single penny they could possibly extort out of the poverty stricken and miserable people that rely on their services for life-saving medicine to actually be responsible for the people that died relying on them for their services right?
That would imply that there’s some sort of moral obligation for service providers to provide the services that they agreed to provide to the people that are paying them for said services!
That would imply that when a company whose entire point of existence is providing healthcare services to the people that need them does not provide those services when they are needed that the company is responsible for the misery and pain and deaths that result as a lack of providing those services!
That would imply that the CEO who is the leader of that company has all of those hundreds of thousands of gallons of blood on his hands!
That would also imply that people getting fed up and retaliating against these billionaires are actually justifiable heroes rather than depraved bloodthirsty savages only seeking to destroy the American way of life.
That’s crazy talk!
Come on now! If you read the article (/s), you’d know that he was one of the good guys who wanted to change the system.
No more than the politicians who won’t pass single payer health care reform.
And the only reason we even have the ACA is because the Dems had a filibuster proof majority for a handful of weeks, over a decade ago.
Jesus fuck it’s been almost a decade since Obama…
I live under a rock; what is “single payer”?
Single payer is a term generally used to describe government-paid, or socialized medicine. The government is the “payer” of the healthcare. In the absence of private-insurance companies, they would be the single payer. At least that’s how I think of the term.
NYT CEO? Well they did cheerlead the Iraq war, reported lies that led to the war without question like a fucking press release and slandered anyone who dare speak against it. How many Iraqis died? 200k?
That’s not true.
I hated the insurance companies yesterday, but I wasn’t posting about actually killing anyone.
People have been talking about guillotines in the abstract. Now they are talking about it in concrete terms.
No way to tell why the working class would feel this way.
Just no way to know what compells normal citizens to thrist for blood.
Yeah not like they’ve been telling you for decades or anything…
One thing I’ve learned is that abusers don’t see themselves as abusers.
They’re “Doing what is necessary”, the abuse “hurts them more than it hurts you”.
They can’t hear your cries, your pleas fall on hearts of stone.
And most of all they absolutely cannot understand why you are still upset about it.
There was a time when I had a pickaxe in my hands and my abusive stepdad turned his back to me. For a moment I knew I could murder him, I could bury that pickaxe in his skull and he couldn’t stop me.
I felt at that moment that nothing that would happen to me as a consequence of doing that would be worse than the abuse I was going through at that time.
I don’t know what stopped me. I had to live with the abuse for another full year after that moment.
To this day, my mom has no idea how close I came to becoming a murderer.
If you knew me, the idea of me wanting to pop a man’s head like a rotten coconut would seem cartoonish and comical.
But I was close.
If I knew I was dying and I met the man responsible for it, I could cross that line.
I’ve been close before.
Ex US attorney Preet Bharara says that an important boundary is when a fantasy “graduates”, going from protected free speech to credible threat.
It seem socials are very clear on this line… it aint a crime to cheer.
Also, this has been so effective that media is unable to provide a coherent rebuttal within the oligarch framework. This guy was not an owner but he was a topish officer within their system responsible for a division within a strategic sector. They need this guy to be a martyr but public rejected that narrative and just meme the death with some heavy social commentary on the current conditions within health industry and broader economy.
Unless you’re in that one news sub; then it’s bannable.
Well, a lot of mods just journalist in the news sub. So this is classic, check who you can’t criticize test.
They won’t permit you to provide any counter narrative.
Which is very elastic.
Think of it this way; no one is threatened by the sight of Al Yankovic coming down the street in a tank. People run for cover when Joe Pesci walks into a store and asks how much for a chainsaw.
Thought crimes don’t exist. One has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the thought crimer is taking actions to carry out real crimes.
Maybe you but I am serious when I say we should start guillotining billionaires.
Here’s the thing. The French and Russian governments were unprepared for massive civil unrest.
Here in America we have companies like Blackwater [or whatever they are calling themselves this week] Staffed by ex-CIA hotshots with access to a massive data base and lots and lots of money.
I’d bet anything that they are already planning to capitalize on this attack.
I’d bet anything that they are already planning to capitalize on this attack.
My guess is they’re currently consulting their legal teams and politicians, trying to figure out how to get the public to pay for their own private Secret Service for corporate executives.
I have another comment in this thread. I said that 9/11 gave us the Patriot Act and that this attack will probably lead to something worse.
Right. The legal teams employed by these bastards are the ones who write our laws, our legislators just sign them.
Which is why people need to vote in every election.
AOC and Omar didn’t magically appear. They did old fashioned political work.
This whole story-arc gives first move advantage to the opposition, the oligarchs are being forced to react instead of execute plans as they wish
No.
This is a blip on the radar. Gamestop didn’t destroy the stock markets and this isn’t going to do anything but get people riled up.
9/11/2001 gave us the Patriot Act. You can bet that Trump will push through a law letting any CEOs body guards shoot at will.
This is just the first.
Some of us have nothing left to lose. Fuck the private military contractors. Guns and drones are the great equalizer. They’ve waged war on us for decades it’s about time we fight back.
Read up on what happened in France after the guillotines… Maybe not the best idea to repeat that error.
This guys roughly as popular as Bernie Sanders was in 2015 and the NY Times somehow can’t connect the dots.
The revolution will not be televised.
They are paid not to connect the dots
Good. We pay more for healthcare than any other nation on the planet and the quality is lower than in many other nations. That’s a proven fact.
I hope they’re scared. They should be.
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What procedure is this?
Probably something provided in Europe for free. At least for citizens. I heard americans have to pay even for cast when they break bones.
I had a hernia and spent a third of my income on health insurance but still has to shell out 16000 from my own pocket for non emergency hernia surgery.
I hope the copycats make the job of “C-Suite executive at HMO” an unfillable position, but more likely this will finally get the GOP interested in gun control.
In Russian it’s called “расстрельная должность”, which means position, where firing squad eventually visits you.
Generally in English they’d usually be called “A Patsy” or “Strawman” - someone disposable to do the unpleasant work, whom nobody will particularly miss.
That’s not what I meant. Position, not person, which everyone leaves by being killed(in soviet times) or imprisoned(now).
EDIT: or falling out of window
We have to pay for seeing the nurse before we even get to the doctor and caste part of it. Those are all extra on top of it.
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That hatred has always been there. Media is just focusing on it because someone actually did something about it.
I have a blatant lack of sympathy for the smug liberal elite at the NYT when the guillotine takes off their heads too
I do not understand this phrase. All elites are authoritarians. Explain what a liberal elite is…? Truly what do you mean by that?
The Bourgeoisie are the elite in liberal democracies, and liberalism is their ideology. Hence the name “liberal elite”.
Do not confuse liberalism with progressivism or leftism. It’s dead centrist at the moment.
There’s no such thing as liberal elite. If you’re a liberal and you don’t believe in anyone who is elite, it goes against the ideology.
You should try explaining this to the liberal elite. They absolutely believe in it.
Just look at how they talk about people who live in rural areas.
Citizen: can we get universal health care?
GOP: no Dems: no #BLM #LGBTQIA+rights ✊🏻✊🏽✊🏿🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
Basically this.
I mean I agree with you that happened but also you know there are people in the democratic party who try/are trying. What you’re saying is funny and easy to say but in this conversation it’s just not true.
Ahistorical nonsense. They don’t believe in a nobility by birth, but they absolutely believe that some people “are just better than others” and who should rule. Its so foundational to the ideology that its written into the US Constitution. Anyone who believes that capitalism is a meritocracy (ie Liberals) believes there should be a liberal elite.
The NYT leans heavily liberal. As does most of the pearly clutching mainstream media.
Also, slightly unrelated, let’s not forget who published known lies leading to the Iraq war, cheerleaded it and slandered anyone who questioned the WMD narrative. They’ve got ~200k lives on their hands.
Would be a shame if someone deny delay desposed their CEO.
The billionaire owned media…yeah the only thing liberal about the media is the right wing owners screaming about it. There’s no liberal media
Liberals love capitalism. They love dropping bombs with rainbow and BLM flags on them. They’re fine with imperialism so long as it’s the first black Indian woman president doing the bombing.
The NYT is overwhelmingly liberal. They have some conservatives in their editorial staff but the majority are liberals. Most of the MSM is. But all the MSM protect their class interests.
They protect their socioeconomic class at the expense of the working class. They are the servants of the billionaires. The republicans are no better, that goes without saying.
Liberalism is a right wing ideology. You’ve almost got the point.
You are extremely twisted up.
Liberalism is not right wing, and what you’re talking about is neoliberalism. Which is different.
Overton window around here is so far right you think you’re the one correcting him… Fuck damn.
Compared to monarchy/fascism, liberalism is farther towards the center but it does not often cross that line.
Hahaha imagine being this arrogant and immediately shooting yourself in the foot.
No Liberalism is left leaning. It is a center ideology 100% but liberalism is left leaning. The concept of liberalism literally became in existence opposite of a monarchy right wing style, placing it to the left.
Now since then the term liberalism has been abused especially in the US but you live in a world that was ruled by kings and still is in many ways. But you think globally that means liberals are right leaning?? Outside of your mind.
Liberalism enshrines capitalism so it’s right of center.
Uh huh and what about the rest of liberalism
No. You’re completely wrong. Liberalism is a right wing ideology. Neoliberalism is even further right. The entire US political spectrum save for a tiny handful of elected officials (Bernie and the squad, most of whom are centrists at best) are right wing to fascist.
Nope. You completely don’t understand classic liberalism and modern liberalism or neoliberalism
You seem to have some completely backwards idea that liberals are anti-billionaire socialists when liberalism is pro-capitalism by definition. NY Times is the mouthpiece of american liberalism.
It means Jews tradirionally
It is unclear what motivated the incident or whether it was tied to Mr. Thompson’s work in the insurance industry.
This is a joke right? Is the Times being sarcastic?
The dude inscribed his motivation on the freaking bullet casings. I mean, come on!
It’s interesting seeing all the different ways every article about this walks around the obvious. The news corps are really showing thier biases this year.
They do a little trolling
I live in SORROW at this Father and Husband being MURDERED! WHY couldn’t they just Murder a Bunch of Children Instead! Or a POOR Father and Husband instead! Then I WOULDNT have cared!
Messages that law enforcement officials say were found on bullet casings at the scene of the shooting in front of a Midtown hotel — “delay” and “deny”
That’s next level
Pretty sure it’s a reference to this book.
It would be so funny if there was a joke in the book like, “It’s not like you can shoot your problem away!”
Thanks, I was wondering what the reference was.
No mention of “depose” huh… And obviously NYT would try to paint Brian in a positive light.
NYT is neo liberal rag that will protect neo liberal agenda?
No way!
Got no hate. Just zero sympathy. Live life at the expense of others, but don’t be surprised if they fail to care for you in return.
About seven chief executives of publicly traded companies die each year, he said
This article is a goddamned joke. The poor chief executives! What in the fuck is this.
They signaling to shareholders that this happens all the time, online drama does not matter.
Haha that’s what I took away too!
Like, “I know we’re all worried. But I promise, we’ll have a new CEO in a few days and nobody is going to lose money.”
I did not read NYT article but I bet that’s the msg’ing to their core audience here while proletariat is doing a circle jerk, well deserved though. They rarely get a W.
Does the NYT think this was attempt to bring down the company. Are they stupid?
NYT got paid to run PR for the corpo. They need to project that they are in control. One dead officer doesn’t change anything from money making perspective
Nyr is writing what they were told to write herr
Good thing they announced this to the world, lol. Like we care. I know investors “care” and would hate for it to actually bring down the company but Jesus, forest through the trees.
They got away for a century with narrative weaving tactics… Things are finally appear to be changing tho
Fuk em
If you’re going to quote that you should quote the rest of it:
but almost always from health complications or accidents. A targeted attack could have much larger implications.
They’re not begging for sympathy, they go on to talk about the effect this act will have on the health insurance companies, which is what we all want to see.
they go on to talk about the effect this act will have on the health insurance companies
They’ll beef up their security and continue with their horrific practices. No greedy bastards will change anything that affects their bottom line.
I think you’re right. I was imagining what a meeting of executives would be like in the wake of this, and I can just see them continuing to follow the almighty dollar, because that is their one true incentive that all others lead to. Anybody who proposed taking a hit to revenue to be more moral would be fired by the board.
The rest of it doesn’t change anything.
It does though.
They’re used to CEOs dying. They’re not used to CEOs being murdered because of the actions of their companies.
The hate for our abusive and predatory “healthcare” system has been omnipresent for a very long time. This just gave us all a shared focal point to collect around. I hope this keeps building steam. This one act could lead to collective actions to make these companies scared. These CEOs, politicians, and billionaires NEED to know they are not untouchable. I supported a girlfriend through terminal cancer and saw how “selective” insurance companies can be on what diagnostics and treatments they’ll allow. That shit radicalized me permanently.
Most of the media seems committed to ensuring that this focus on abusive health insurance companies evaporates as soon as possible.
These CEOs, politicians, and billionaires NEED to know they are not untouchable
My guess is that this catalyst will do nothing except cause them to make sure they’re untouchable, and will probably figure out a way to use taxpayer money to do it.
Ahh. The good old at&t tag line, “Reach out and touch someone” comes to mind.
“Object embedding tool”
A longtime employee of UnitedHealthcare said that workers at the company had been aware for years that members were unhappy. Mr. Thompson was one of the few executives who wanted to do something about it, said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the company does not allow workers to speak publicly without permission.
In speeches to employees, Mr. Thompson spoke about the need to change the state of health care coverage in the country and the culture of the company, topics other executives avoided, the employee said.
The speeches:
