Why did Luigi Mangione allegedly target UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson?
The initial consensus was: He had chronic back pain, surgery wouldn't improve it (or make it worse), and his insurance company wouldn't pay for the treatment.
While “The System” may have played a role in ruining Mangione's life, there were certainly many other factors, including the belief that all pain requires treatment.
However, it appears that the surgery was a success. On Reddit he raved about it and recommended it to others. There is no record of him complaining of back pain after surgery.
There are also records that Mangione has complained of other illnesses, including Lyme disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and brain fog. All of these symptoms are relatively new and are often considered to have psychosomatic components.
chronic never-ending pain
I understand this all too well, as I come from a family of doctors and my mother also suffers from chronic, never-ending pain. I also worked in branding for a major pharmaceutical company for two years. On the agency side, I also worked for some creepy and well-funded medical startups in Silicon Valley.
After these experiences, I have basically come to the same conclusion as RFK Jr. America's for-profit medical/pharmaceutical system is the single most evil institution on the planet. It is also the most powerful.
This should have become clear during the coronavirus pandemic, which literally swept the world. Also, given that this virus now has the power to mutilate our own children, sometimes against our will, and addict them to expensive drugs that they must take for the rest of their lives. That should be obvious.
I doubt that what we're seeing with United Healthcare and Luigi Mangione is all there is to it, but I think it's more central to the killer's motivations, which seem to be expressed in the messages left on the cartridges. I'm interested in the apparent contradiction in . “Defend, deny, step down.”
Even some of Mr. Mangione's online sympathizers, who do not go so far as to praise the assassination claims, believe there is a consistent political message behind them. However, it is based on the false assumption about pain that it must always be “treated” with drugs or surgery.
Physical diagnosis, spiritual condition
This assumption is certainly beneficial for the pharmaceutical industry. The more patients who have chronic, consistent pain, the better. The only limit is how much your insurance is willing to pay. Insurance companies are very greedy, but some claims should actually be denied.
It is not uncommon to receive a physical diagnosis for a spiritual condition. I know my mother has experienced this her whole life, always having some new pain somewhere, or a blanket bullshit like “fibromyalgia” that gives pharmaceutical companies free access to her insurance funds. I've seen it come with a diagnosis.
Literally millions of older single women suffer from various chronic pain conditions. They have been told by pharmaceutical companies and the media, not insurance companies, that their pain is due to a treatable disease. But somehow, as profits increase, new “curable” diseases emerge that require treatment.
But if none of this works (which is often the case), what's an insurance company supposed to do? Do you just pay endless insurance claims forever, knowing nothing will work out? Denying this claim is at least telling drug companies that it's time to try something else other than paying perverse incentives.
Whose benefit?
Indeed, companies like United Healthcare should never exist in the first place. Even Adam Smith, the father of market capitalism, specifically stated that certain products are too malleable to be carried on the market, and pharmaceuticals certainly fit into that category. Fear for human health and a desperate dependence on authority distort markets and create the frightening potential for very deep, evil, and pervasive abuse.
This is exactly what happened, and it eroded the entire planet. But in this case, UnitedHealthcare's “profit motive” appears to have had little to do with Mangione's struggles. Of course, Mr. Mangione's alleged manifesto invites us to consider his motives to be purely political rather than personal. He targets the “parasites” responsible for America's extremely expensive and highly inefficient health care system.
As a diagnosis of what needs to change, the manifesto, if you can call it that, is unsatisfying. It's the bad guys upstream from insurance companies, the doctors who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on unnecessary surgeries, and the pharmaceutical companies who run commercials that tell everyone that the answer to chronic problems is an addictive drug. etc. are ignored.
bad pharmaceutical companies
It's amazing how prevalent commercials like this are. Pharmaceutical companies are by far the single largest advertisers in all media, literally keeping mainstream media afloat. We should ask ourselves why a culture that severely restricts tobacco advertising gives legal international drug cartels the freedom to expand their marketing. What is the impact? that Is there a public health problem?
During COVID-19, we saw the impact of people abandoning their families to die because television told them to do so. And who was controlling the TV? Pfizer (Pharmaceuticals) and Fauci (Public Health). Not by the insurance company that had to foot the bill.
While “The System” may have played a role in ruining Mangione's life, there are certainly many other factors, including the belief that all pain requires treatment. Perhaps in a less staunchly secular society, he could have understood his suffering as an inevitable, or at least unavoidable, consequence of being alive. If he had done that, his father might not have been killed in cold blood.
However, our society lacks the concept of beneficial pain. In fact, we are obsessed with getting rid of pain completely. Therefore, our medical ideal is to precisely match cause and treatment so that a single treatment can eradicate the disease with maximum efficiency and without collateral damage.
This power promised by such treatments is so seductive that it is easy to succumb to wishful thinking, if not outright delusion. It's in the name we often use: “Magic Bullet.”
