• SeaJ@lemm.ee
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    The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” were discovered by detectives on the shell casings found at the scene where Brian Thompson, the CEO of major insurance group UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down, police sources told ABC News late Wednesday evening.

    Maybe it is it not a good idea to deny coverage…

  • CouncilOfFriends@lemmy.world
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    “Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a God.”

    - Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist, 1938.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Well, maybe let Paulette know that the clothes she is wearing, the car she is driving, the house she is living in, and anything else she owns was all bought with the deaths and suffering of thousands of people.

  • gerbler@lemmy.world
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    Let me be the first to decry this senseless killing. Senseless killing of thousands of people in the name of profit. Also some loser got iced too I guess.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    With hundreds of thousands he made suffer and killed, the police will have more work to find a culprit than in “Who shot Mr. Burns?”.

  • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
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    I guess I should have sympathy, but I’m afraid they I don’t cover that. Best I can do is a chortle.

  • Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world
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    He made a life promising one thing and doing another. His wife can’t fathom that the person who threatened to kill him was a man of their word.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    6 days ago

    Fortunately he looked at his line going up and reassured himself he was doing the right thing.

  • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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    The only thing that surprises me about someone assassinating a CEO of a company that regularly ruins lives is that it’s not more common.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      I guess we’re reaching a stage were most people are both aware of the harm those people do and believe Ju$tice will never do anything about it, quit the opposite.

        • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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          No, it’s called revolution. And it doesn’t usually end well. It all depends on who ends up standing stop the heap that’s left over with the fighting is over.

        • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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          Everyone thinks any change is good change. I say this with my straight white male privilege (as I pass as)… do you like your retail delivery? Your job assuming you’re not breaking bricks? Your creature comfort? Your family’s safety, old and young. Ask people in Ukraine how fun civil unrest and war are in a modern Western community just like yours. I wanted that when I was 15. Now I have empathy that the countrymen and women for whom I want justice, are not cannon fodder for overly academic jerk off fantasies about socialist revolution.

            • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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              Substitute the women in Iran in the '70s if you want.

              The point remains the same. Living through your society falling apart is not nearly as fun as the post-apocalyptic fiction would lead you to believe.

            • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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              My point was the way of life for someone used to 2020s creature comfort in Western liberal metropolises. Nothing to do with the polisci behind why the experience is happening. And a civil war would be even worse which I thought was implicit but apologies I’d it wasnt

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          Yeah, generally it leads to societal and economic collapse. Things sometimes improve, but it sometimes takes decades, and usually a shitload of people die as collateral damage via starvation, extrajudicial killings, etc. normal people, not these solid gold assholes.

          We one time had an exchange student whose father lived through one such event and nearly starved to death in the fallout after it had run it’s course. He said his father’s strongest memories were that he was so hungry, for years. :/

        • Pips@lemmy.sdf.org
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          Generally speaking, normalizing extrajudicial killing of people that aren’t liked tends to trend in a bad direction.

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    The way this article seems to go out of its way to humanize this guy before remembering to mention the ways this guy has hurt so many people by chasing profit at the expensive of people’s lives is kind of wild.

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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      You need to remember that ALL media outlets are tools of the rich to keep the poor in check. They will ALWAYS spin these things to make the rich person look a good as possible.

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        He was a human.

        A sociopathic one. An arrogant one(I can’t imagine ever walking around without security if I got rich off of deciding who gets to live and die, but then again I’m not evil or stupid enough to do any of that).

        He was human, but that doesn’t mean he should have gotten a free pass to be evil. The “justice” system was obviously never going to deal any justice for the millions of families who lost a beloved one to this mans’ sociopathic decisions.

        Sometimes when you do evil things, you win evil prizes.

        • timestatic@feddit.org
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          Systematic (and alleged automated) denials of claims are highly immoral, unethical and possibly illegal thing to do. I just think this doesn’t solve the root problem and just adds one more death without fixing it. I don’t think this is both a sensible way as well as right way to fix this. Also, I don’t think you can just stamp each CEO as immoral automatically. General thinking for specific groups of people is frowned upon based on ethnicity, origin or gender, yet when we look at socioeconomic groups it suddenly becomes right? I think the freedom of movement should exist for even those in power and political//legal issues should be handled the right way. Peaceful protests and movements for a healthcare reform are the only right way long term to support this if you’re American and really care about the issue. Short term violence LARPing just causes polarization and makes the people fighting against this system seem crazy.

          • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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            4 days ago

            Systematic (and alleged automated) denials of claims are highly immoral, unethical and possibly illegal thing to do.

            Immoral? Yes. Illegal? Obviously not, considering the amount of people who have died due to these exact kind of denials.

            It’s not illegal because the same people making money off of denying claims and killing people are using this vast wealth to lobby and propagandize against any step towards universal health care.

            I just think this doesn’t solve the root problem and just adds one more death without fixing it.

            I think you are probably right, but I think it at least sends a message to the people who can fix it. I don’t think it’s going to make the root problem worse, either.

      • gerbler@lemmy.world
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        So we’re the thousands who died due to his greed. I’ll try to remember to shed a tear for him after all the rest.

    • EleventhHour@lemmy.world
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      “Killing one person is wrong, but causing millions to suffer and many to die due to lack of healthcare is obviously OK if you’re doing it for massive profit!“

      • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
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        “I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People,” said the golem calmly.

        “I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!”

        "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.

        • Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
          • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
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            No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence

            I feel Sir Pterry will outlive us all

            GNU Terry Pratchett

      • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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        It’s worse than that. It’s not “lack of healthcare”, the people who were victimized had health insurance, they were just lied to. It’s people paying, thinking they’re covered, then UH’s algorithm denies their claims (90% of them) to increase their profits. While people die and families are bankrupted.

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        No. If it’s done “legally” then it’s OK. That’s why cops can murder people and it’s OK. As long as you can buy a politician or two to legalize the suffering you cause, you’re doing just fine.

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          You’re forgetting that if it benefits the elite by causing the poor and or minorities to suffer, it is automatically legal!

    • azimir@lemmy.ml
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      They’re hoping the humanizing also protects their CEO, who is a different variation of corrupt and harmful to society.

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    Economic vigilantism is really dangerous and if this isn’t a one off it’s likely an indicator that people feel like justice is unattainable.

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      Trump has proven this, and the fact Elon (the richest manchild in the world) is literally in his cabinet now only exacerbates the situation.

      I don’t think things are radically worse, that’s the interesting thing… It’s the fact we’ve discarded any semblance of justice at the highest levels. Like, nobody is even pretending now. The highest office in the land is about to be occupied by an openly corrupt idiot.

      When people lose hope in their leaders, they realize it’s up to them to change the world. Great acts are often done in the fallout of such times. Both acts of great kindness, and great violence.

      Injustices become things to act on when you have zero hope of change from the people who should be enacting change.

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      Justice against these people IS unattainable. Nothing fucking touches them, case and point Trump can lead a violent insurrection and nothing happens

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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        I don’t disagree that society has been unjust in actuality for quite some time.

        I think public sentiment has been shifting so that more people are aware of how tiered our justice system is and that change in perception is what’s interesting.

        • ccunning@lemmy.world
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          I think Trump has shown people that they don’t need to hide the tieredness of the justice system anymore so it’s not surprising that more people are aware of it.

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            Trump is fucking bizarre. In pre-Trump times, the Jan 6th rioters would have been thrown to the wolves even by the politicians aligned with them because, you know, fuck the poor.

            The fact that Trump may pardon them is quite surprising.

        • Wahots@pawb.social
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          Well, it’s too late now thanks to the asshole with the aim of a stormtrooper. The criminal won and all of his freaks and monsters are burrowing into America’s chest like some drug-resistant, flesh-eating bacteria. Best case scenario, we live with lots of necrotic tissue and deep scarring. That infection started spreading as soon as he named Vance as his successor.

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      it’s likely an indicator that people feel like justice is unattainable

      I’m sorry, have you not been paying attention?

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      You could look at this as a one off, or if you want to start looking at assassinations in total then you get to include the two trump would be assassins and make a damn strong argument to your point that this is exactly what a society that refuses to hold people accountable looks like. Honestly its the same concept as when the Black Panthers started giving free breakfast to kids, if no one else is going to solve the problem, people will do it themselves.

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      it’s likely an indicator that people feel like justice is unattainable.

      I think you mean, ‘people are starting to wake up to the fact that justice is unattainable’.

      Where have you been the last decade or 3? If you’re rich and not going after other rich people, you’re practically untouchable. Bernie Madoff didn’t catch jail time because he defrauded Anne and Bill out of their pension, he defrauded people who have money matter.

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      It’s so unattainable that it’s become something even normies understand. There are rules for us, and there are none for them. Think about how ingrained that has become in U.S. culture recently, and you’ll come to the same conclusion the vigilante did.