Paulette Thompson Says Husband Received Threats 'Over Lack Of Coverage' Leading Up To Shooting
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot, with his wife revealing prior threats over healthcare coverage, raising questions about his controversial role.
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.
Expect it to happen more often. I think we're entering that stage of civilization.
Yeah, especially in a country with so many guns, that are so easy to obtain.
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.
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.
“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!“
"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.
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.
That's the corporate press for you.
They're hoping the humanizing also protects their CEO, who is a different variation of corrupt and harmful to society.
But we are capitalists, chasing profit is the highest morality and human calling. It is killing without direct investor profit that is immoral.
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.
Maybe because he was a human???
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.
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.
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.
it's likely an indicator that people feel like justice is unattainable
I'm sorry, have you not been paying attention?
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.
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.
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.
In the absence of justice, people settle for revenge instead.
Idk it sounds like someone else got a lot closer to getting justice than I'll get.
And since it is not, there are no alternatives but to switch diets.
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.
So she knew he was receiving threats because of lack of coverage and still had the audacity to refer to the shooting as "senseless."
I guess there are consequences for your actions. Who would have thought.
But that's only supposed to apply to poor people!
That's just one rare case. There's plenty of others that go unpunished.
hours before he was set to address an investor meeting about UnitedHealthcare's 2025 financial outlook, which projected revenues exceeding £375 billion ($450 billion).
Man, good thing Biden said we didn't need to fix our healthcare system. Otherwise that would be worrying...
Revenue is not profits. The profits are $28 billion, that's only 6% which is actually low.
$28, 000, 000, 000.00 is low?
lmao
How many people did they kill for that $28B?
Yep, 28 billion isn't much profit. How will he be able to afford his 300th yacht now on his measly salary?
OK,
The company expects cash flows from operations to range from $32 billion to $33 billion.
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...
Now that's a manifesto.
According to police sources, the three words “deny,” “depose,” and “defend” were carved into the live rounds and shell casings
...
The three words bear a striking resemblance to Jay Feinman’s [20]10 book Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claim and What You Can Do About It.
They are also words you find all over letters from insurance companies when they are denying you coverage. Which lead to the title of the book.
There are only 12 people who will need to hear this, but on the off chance that you are one of them: Jury nullification is a thing.
I mean, not surprising. He was a massive scumbag. His policies led to the deaths of thousands of people. I'm sure he got lots of threats.
"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.
I read this in Megadeth, which is where I first heard it
For me it was Blade 3
Hah, same here
Paulette Thompson probably sucks, did you see who she was married to.
You finally broke the world billionaires... Time to go get the cans of beans rotated out in your bunkers. Tell your Paulettes to fuel up the tactical SUV and stick the tear gas perimeter dispensers. You're about to get really fucking paranoid... Is this next horrible heartless decision your last... Yes, it probably is - does that change any in the decision you'll make?
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.
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?".
Can't say what the specific motivations are without knowing who did it, but it certainly would be plausible that this was someone denied coverage for a terminal or otherwise life ruining condition. How many people out there did this guy's company put into a hopeless situation? Once they have nothing to lose, it's not hard to imagine someone deciding to get revenge.
Congress and the incoming Trump administration should also take note of that before they do anything to strip coverage from tens of millions of people.
Zerooooo sympathy.
Boom goes the dynamite
Well the causal relation there is speculation. The thing that seems odd to me is the shooter seemingly went to great lengths to avoid sending a message - hiding their identity, issuing no public statement, etc. If this was over a denied claim that they threatened over, why bother hiding their identity? It would be trivial to figure it out based on the claim.
Then you have the fact that the shooter apparently used a silencer too and cleared a jam quickly. Seems like rather than a disgruntled nobody sending a message, this seems more like someone trying to make him go away as efficiently and quietly as possible.
So alternate theory: The victim had a lawsuit filed against him by the DOJ related to an anti-trust investigation and insider trading. What if he decided to make a deal with the DOJ, and somebody else found out and didn't like it?
But literally everyone got the message.
This guy killed thousands of people for profit, we don’t need to know which family wanted revenge.
I mean they’ll do an investigation. The most likely thing is a protest/revenge killing, but there are other possibilities. One I thought of - what if someone actually wanted him killed for reasons completely unrelated to him being an insurance executive? For a hypothetical example (which I have zero evidence to believe to be true), what if the wife wanted him killed for the insurance money? Maybe he was as cruel to her as he was to his customers. Maybe the wife hires a hit man to take the guy out. That hit sure looked pretty professional. Again, I have no evidence to suspect this is true. But what if? Anyone who had a motive to have the guy killed could easily try to make it look like a protest killing. And you rarely get to that level of corporate power without having a few skeletons in the closet.
This could just be someone that practiced their firearms skills for quite awhile before making their move. Sure, they don't seem to have left an explicit message, but that may not be necessary. If they are someone who was cheated by United, well that's what people will assume anyway. So an explicit note/confession would serve only to provide authorities another method to track them down.
I think they just didn't want to be caught
I guess it's interesting that there's an investigation going on, but I wouldn't take someone's ability to clear a jam as indication this was professional. You'd be hard-pressed to find a LEO that practice fires a tenth of the rounds that many enthusiasts in the US would blow off just for funsies. Not to mention IPSC participants where you learn to clear a jam damn fast because you're being timed on the run.
If he was shooting with subsonic ammunition then the pistol may have needed cocking after every shot. It didn't really seem to slow him down much and probably made the shots quieter because there wouldn't be the loud crack of the bullets breaking the sound barrier.
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.
I guess I should have sympathy, but I'm afraid they I don't cover that. Best I can do is a chortle.
That man is a DEMON!
I'm NOT talking about the one who has killed MILLIONS of Americans! I'm talking about the one who Killed ONE person!
ibtimes is taking down comments immediately
I hope he felt nothing but fear regret and pain in his final moments 🥰
Live by the Greed, Die by the Greed
Canary Cole mine?
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.
Huh.... Sounds you get what you fucking deserve eh bub?
Fortunately he looked at his line going up and reassured himself he was doing the right thing.
“Eat the rich!” people exclaim, but as soon as they see the first step of how that particular sausage is made, they’re suddenly all vegans.
Evidenced by the reactions today people seem to enjoy the taste
Speak for yourself.
Let me assure you, eating the rich is ABSOLUTELY vegan. All creatures deserve good health and in practice veganism involves seperating from and dismantling all of the power structures that subjugate others for personal gain, human and animal alike.
I feel no pity for those that taunt a bull and get gored nor do I for insurance executives that systematically deny treatment who get shot.
"The Bourgeois are not human animal". Though calling them vegetables is still too demeaning to the celery and carrot, who never did anything wrong. Maybe they are mineral? Lead and mercury caused a lot of suffering, and I don't feel bad about insulting them.
This is the only reason I accept to refusing to call cops "pigs". The humble swine does not deserve such a comparison.
Lmao, no, I'm feasting
Supposedly they taste like bacon.
I love bacon and I'm famished
No we feast on their money while they get to serve it up voluntarily to stay clear of the guillotine.