New York shooter

A lot of assumptions being tossed around here, as usual. Sounds like an old women’s sewing circle. Wait for the true facts, if guilty , the death penalty is in order. If your pissed enough to do the crime, you should be ready to take the punishment.
 
Bumblebee said:
He was also found not guilty by a jury of his peers.....

Nobody made him out to be a martyr, they just supported his verdict.....as he was defending himself..

This person actually assassinated someone and fled........he will get his......
Click to expand...
OJ was also found not guilty be a jury of his peers. Same for the guy who choked the life out of a man in New York City. Like my mother used to tell me, "sometimes life isn't fair".
 
Bumblebee said:
I just don't get why a person who assassinated someone is being touted as some sort of folk hero...

I read the police who arrested this clown are getting death threats......

I can only imagine what will happen when he is convicted....and he will be......

What a sick world....

Click to expand...
Maybe this will help you understand what apparently drove a man to commit murder:

When Profits Kill: The Deadly Costs of Treating Healthcare as a Business
“The scariest sentence in the English language is: ‘I’m a billionaire, and I’m here to help.’”
THOM HARTMANN
The recent assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare — the health insurance company with, reportedly, the highest rate of claims rejections (and thus dead, wounded, and furious customers and their relations) — gives us a perfect window to understand the stupidity and danger of the Musk/Trump/Ramaswamy strategy of “cutting government” to “make it more efficient, run it like a corporation.”
Consider health care, which in almost every other developed country in the world is legally part of the commons — the infrastructure of the nation, like our roads, public schools, parks, police, military, libraries, and fire departments — owned by the people collectively and run for the sole purpose of meeting a basic human need.
The entire idea of government — dating all the way back to Gilgamesh and before — is to fulfill that singular purpose of meeting citizens’ needs and keeping the nation strong and healthy. That’s a very different mandate from that of a corporation, which is solely directed (some argue by law) to generate profits.
The Veterans’ Administration healthcare system, for example, is essentially socialist rather than capitalist. The VA owns the land and buildings, pays the salaries of everybody from the surgeons to the janitors, and makes most all decisions about care. Its primary purpose — just like that of the healthcare systems of every other democracy in the world — is to keep and make veterans healthy. Its operation is nearly identical to that of Britain’s beloved socialist National Health Service.
UnitedHealthcare similarly owns its own land and buildings, and its officers and employees behave in a way that’s aligned with the company’s primary purpose, but that purpose is to make a profit. Sure, it writes checks for healthcare that’s then delivered to people, but that’s just the way UnitedHealthcare makes money; writing checks and, most importantly, refusing to write checks.
Think about it. If UnitedHealthcare’s main goal was to keep people healthy, they wouldn’t be rejecting 32 percent of claims presented to them. Like the VA, when people needed help they’d make sure they got it.
Instead, they make damn sure their executives get millions of dollars every year (and investors get billions) because making a massive profit ($23 billion last year, and nearly every penny arguably came from saying “no” to somebody’s healthcare needs) is their real business.
On the other hand, if the VA’s goal was to make or save money by “being run efficiently like a company,” they’d be refusing service to a lot more veterans (which it appears is on the horizon).
This is the essential difference between government and business, between meeting human needs (social) and reaching capitalism’s goal (profit).
It’s why its deeply idiotic to say, as Republicans have been doing since the Reagan Revolution, that “government should be run like a business.” That’s nearly as crackbrained a suggestion as saying that fire departments should make a profit (a doltish notion promoted by some Libertarians). Government should be run like a government, and companies should be run like companies.
Given how obvious this is with even a little bit of thought, where did this imbecilic idea that government should run like a business come from?
Turns out, it’s been driven for most of the past century by morbidly rich businessmen (almost entirely men) who don’t want to pay their taxes. As Jeff Tiedrich notes:
“The scariest sentence in the English language is: ‘I’m a billionaire, and I’m here to help.’”
Rightwing billionaires who don’t want to pay their fair share of the costs of society set up think tanks, policy centers, and built media operations to promote their idea that the commons are really there for them to plunder under the rubric of privatization and efficiency.
They’ve had considerable success. Slightly more than half of Medicare is now privatized, multiple Republican-controlled states are in the process of privatizing their public school systems, and the billionaire-funded Project 2025 and the incoming Trump administration have big plans for privatizing other essential government services.
The area where their success is most visible, though, is the American healthcare system. Because the desire of rightwing billionaires not to pay taxes have prevailed ever since Harry Truman first proposed single-payer healthcare like most of the rest of the world has, Americans spend significantly more on healthcare than other developed countries.
In 2022, citizens of the United States spent an estimated $12,742 per person on healthcare, the highest among wealthy nations. This is nearly twice the average of $6,850 per person for other wealthy OECD countries.
Over the next decade, it is estimated that America will spend between $55 and $60 trillion on healthcare if nothing changes and we continue to cut giant corporations in for a large slice of our healthcare money.
On the other hand, Senator Bernie Sanders’ single-payer Medicare For All plan would only cost $32 billion over the next 10 years. And it would cover everybody in America, every man woman and child, in every medical aspect including vision, dental, psychological, and hearing.
Currently 25 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever.
If we keep our current system, the difference between it and the savings from a single-payer system will end up in the pockets, in large part, of massive insurance giants and their executives and investors. And as campaign contributions for bought off Republicans. This isn’t rocket science.
And you’d think that giving all those extra billions to companies like UnitedHealthcare would result in America having great health outcomes. But, no.
Despite insanely higher spending, the U.S. has a lower life expectancy at birth, higher rates of chronic diseases, higher rates of avoidable or treatable deaths, and higher maternal and infant mortality rates than any of our peer nations.
Compared to single-payer nations like Canada, the U.S. also has a higher incidence of chronic health conditions, Americans see doctors less often and have fewer hospital stays, and the U.S. has fewer hospital beds and physicians per person.
No other country in the world allows a predatory for-profit industry like this to exist as a primary way of providing healthcare. Every other advanced democracy considers healthcare a right of citizenship, rather than an opportunity for a handful of industry executives to hoard a fortune, buy Swiss chalets, and fly around on private jets.
This is one of the most widely shared graphics on social media over the past few days in posts having to do with Thompson’s murder…
Sure, there are lots of health insurance companies in other developed countries, but instead of offering basic healthcare (which is provided by the government) mostly wealthy people subscribe to them to pay for premium services like private hospital rooms, international air ambulance services, and cosmetic surgery.
Essentially, UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson made decisions that killed Americans for a living, in exchange for $10 million a year. He and his peers in the industry are probably paid as much as they are because there is an actual shortage of people with business training who are willing to oversee decisions that cause or allow others to die in exchange for millions in annual compensation.
That Americans are well aware of this obscenity explains the gleeful response to his murder that’s spread across social media, including the refusal of online sleuths to participate in finding his killer.
It shouldn’t need be said that vigilantism is no way to respond to toxic individuals and companies that cause Americans to die unnecessarily. Hopefully, Thompson’s murder will spark a conversation about the role of government and the commons — and the very real need to end the corrupt privatization of our healthcare system (including the Medicare Advantage scam) that has harmed so many of us and killed or injured so many of the people we love.
 
Quote from above post . .
"Hopefully, Thompson’s murder will spark a conversation about the role of government and the commons — and the very real need to end the corrupt privatization of our healthcare system (including the Medicare Advantage scam) that has harmed so many of us and killed or injured so many of the people we love."

This is the take away from that article, I believe . .
Perhaps Mangione did the deed after lots of thought and planning about the best way to bring the whole 'healthcare corporate greed' issue out into the open for everyone to examine and think about solutions to this problem.
He may have anger as the prime motivation to assassinate Thompson, but there may just have been a 'sub-motive' there as well. . . . to highlight the greed of these health care "providers' . . or "health care scammers" as the case may be.
 
OldBusaGuy said:
Maybe this will help you understand what apparently drove a man to commit murder:

When Profits Kill: The Deadly Costs of Treating Healthcare as a Business
“The scariest sentence in the English language is: ‘I’m a billionaire, and I’m here to help.’”
THOM HARTMANN
The recent assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare — the health insurance company with, reportedly, the highest rate of claims rejections (and thus dead, wounded, and furious customers and their relations) — gives us a perfect window to understand the stupidity and danger of the Musk/Trump/Ramaswamy strategy of “cutting government” to “make it more efficient, run it like a corporation.”
Consider health care, which in almost every other developed country in the world is legally part of the commons — the infrastructure of the nation, like our roads, public schools, parks, police, military, libraries, and fire departments — owned by the people collectively and run for the sole purpose of meeting a basic human need.
The entire idea of government — dating all the way back to Gilgamesh and before — is to fulfill that singular purpose of meeting citizens’ needs and keeping the nation strong and healthy. That’s a very different mandate from that of a corporation, which is solely directed (some argue by law) to generate profits.
The Veterans’ Administration healthcare system, for example, is essentially socialist rather than capitalist. The VA owns the land and buildings, pays the salaries of everybody from the surgeons to the janitors, and makes most all decisions about care. Its primary purpose — just like that of the healthcare systems of every other democracy in the world — is to keep and make veterans healthy. Its operation is nearly identical to that of Britain’s beloved socialist National Health Service.
UnitedHealthcare similarly owns its own land and buildings, and its officers and employees behave in a way that’s aligned with the company’s primary purpose, but that purpose is to make a profit. Sure, it writes checks for healthcare that’s then delivered to people, but that’s just the way UnitedHealthcare makes money; writing checks and, most importantly, refusing to write checks.
Think about it. If UnitedHealthcare’s main goal was to keep people healthy, they wouldn’t be rejecting 32 percent of claims presented to them. Like the VA, when people needed help they’d make sure they got it.
Instead, they make damn sure their executives get millions of dollars every year (and investors get billions) because making a massive profit ($23 billion last year, and nearly every penny arguably came from saying “no” to somebody’s healthcare needs) is their real business.
On the other hand, if the VA’s goal was to make or save money by “being run efficiently like a company,” they’d be refusing service to a lot more veterans (which it appears is on the horizon).
This is the essential difference between government and business, between meeting human needs (social) and reaching capitalism’s goal (profit).
It’s why its deeply idiotic to say, as Republicans have been doing since the Reagan Revolution, that “government should be run like a business.” That’s nearly as crackbrained a suggestion as saying that fire departments should make a profit (a doltish notion promoted by some Libertarians). Government should be run like a government, and companies should be run like companies.
Given how obvious this is with even a little bit of thought, where did this imbecilic idea that government should run like a business come from?
Turns out, it’s been driven for most of the past century by morbidly rich businessmen (almost entirely men) who don’t want to pay their taxes. As Jeff Tiedrich notes:
“The scariest sentence in the English language is: ‘I’m a billionaire, and I’m here to help.’”
Rightwing billionaires who don’t want to pay their fair share of the costs of society set up think tanks, policy centers, and built media operations to promote their idea that the commons are really there for them to plunder under the rubric of privatization and efficiency.
They’ve had considerable success. Slightly more than half of Medicare is now privatized, multiple Republican-controlled states are in the process of privatizing their public school systems, and the billionaire-funded Project 2025 and the incoming Trump administration have big plans for privatizing other essential government services.
The area where their success is most visible, though, is the American healthcare system. Because the desire of rightwing billionaires not to pay taxes have prevailed ever since Harry Truman first proposed single-payer healthcare like most of the rest of the world has, Americans spend significantly more on healthcare than other developed countries.
In 2022, citizens of the United States spent an estimated $12,742 per person on healthcare, the highest among wealthy nations. This is nearly twice the average of $6,850 per person for other wealthy OECD countries.
Over the next decade, it is estimated that America will spend between $55 and $60 trillion on healthcare if nothing changes and we continue to cut giant corporations in for a large slice of our healthcare money.
On the other hand, Senator Bernie Sanders’ single-payer Medicare For All plan would only cost $32 billion over the next 10 years. And it would cover everybody in America, every man woman and child, in every medical aspect including vision, dental, psychological, and hearing.
Currently 25 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever.
If we keep our current system, the difference between it and the savings from a single-payer system will end up in the pockets, in large part, of massive insurance giants and their executives and investors. And as campaign contributions for bought off Republicans. This isn’t rocket science.
And you’d think that giving all those extra billions to companies like UnitedHealthcare would result in America having great health outcomes. But, no.
Despite insanely higher spending, the U.S. has a lower life expectancy at birth, higher rates of chronic diseases, higher rates of avoidable or treatable deaths, and higher maternal and infant mortality rates than any of our peer nations.
Compared to single-payer nations like Canada, the U.S. also has a higher incidence of chronic health conditions, Americans see doctors less often and have fewer hospital stays, and the U.S. has fewer hospital beds and physicians per person.
No other country in the world allows a predatory for-profit industry like this to exist as a primary way of providing healthcare. Every other advanced democracy considers healthcare a right of citizenship, rather than an opportunity for a handful of industry executives to hoard a fortune, buy Swiss chalets, and fly around on private jets.
This is one of the most widely shared graphics on social media over the past few days in posts having to do with Thompson’s murder…
Sure, there are lots of health insurance companies in other developed countries, but instead of offering basic healthcare (which is provided by the government) mostly wealthy people subscribe to them to pay for premium services like private hospital rooms, international air ambulance services, and cosmetic surgery.
Essentially, UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson made decisions that killed Americans for a living, in exchange for $10 million a year. He and his peers in the industry are probably paid as much as they are because there is an actual shortage of people with business training who are willing to oversee decisions that cause or allow others to die in exchange for millions in annual compensation.
That Americans are well aware of this obscenity explains the gleeful response to his murder that’s spread across social media, including the refusal of online sleuths to participate in finding his killer.
It shouldn’t need be said that vigilantism is no way to respond to toxic individuals and companies that cause Americans to die unnecessarily. Hopefully, Thompson’s murder will spark a conversation about the role of government and the commons — and the very real need to end the corrupt privatization of our healthcare system (including the Medicare Advantage scam) that has harmed so many of us and killed or injured so many of the people we love.
Click to expand...
Didn't even bother to read this huge post......brevity is your friend......if you want to get some sort of point across I suggest embracing this concept.
 
OldBusaGuy said:
OJ was also found not guilty be a jury of his peers. Same for the guy who choked the life out of a man in New York City. Like my mother used to tell me, "sometimes life isn't fair".
Click to expand...
Maybe not, but the justice system is set up to be fair and equal and not guided and directed by social opinion....

....as it should be.
 
Kiwi Rider said:
Quote from above post . .
"Hopefully, Thompson’s murder will spark a conversation about the role of government and the commons — and the very real need to end the corrupt privatization of our healthcare system (including the Medicare Advantage scam) that has harmed so many of us and killed or injured so many of the people we love."

This is the take away from that article, I believe . .
Perhaps Mangione did the deed after lots of thought and planning about the best way to bring the whole 'healthcare corporate greed' issue out into the open for everyone to examine and think about solutions to this problem.
He may have anger as the prime motivation to assassinate Thompson, but there may just have been a 'sub-motive' there as well. . . . to highlight the greed of these health care "providers' . . or "health care scammers" as the case may be.
Click to expand...
In this way of thinking, CEOs of each and every corporation would be assassinated by some crazed nut as each and every company is driven by profit margins....
 
Kiwi Rider said:
Quote from above post . .
"Hopefully, Thompson’s murder will spark a conversation about the role of government and the commons — and the very real need to end the corrupt privatization of our healthcare system (including the Medicare Advantage scam) that has harmed so many of us and killed or injured so many of the people we love."

This is the take away from that article, I believe . .
Perhaps Mangione did the deed after lots of thought and planning about the best way to bring the whole 'healthcare corporate greed' issue out into the open for everyone to examine and think about solutions to this problem.
He may have anger as the prime motivation to assassinate Thompson, but there may just have been a 'sub-motive' there as well. . . . to highlight the greed of these health care "providers' . . or "health care scammers" as the case may be.
Click to expand...
As someone who sees the healthcare system everyday, I can tell you it's in efficient, slow to respond, and has a lot of fat. It has taken healthcare away from the providers hands and into the hands of insurance companies. They drive patient care. And hire people to do that, that have accounting degrees and not medical degrees.

And I'm in the Veterans Healthcare system. Everything I just stated applies except that last part. They still let the physician drive the bus.

The VA began began addressing it's biggest problem during Trump's first administration. That was lack of doctors. It was the choke point. They began to institute " community care". Now for whatever healthcare need, they can send it back out to a Non VA provider, and pay them directly.

The second biggest problem he addressed was veterans getting access to healthcare. The VA would take sometimes years to vet the vet into the system. Now it takes a few weeks. And the focus was aligned on the veterans, and moved it away from the red tape and bureaucracy.

So now it goes like this. Let's say I broke my leg. Before you had to go to a VA facility to have it mended. Not always easy for some. Now you call your VA team, and they send you to the closest ER and they let that ER know they are paying the bill.

If I do go in to a VA facility, there is a sign posted in every waiting area that says "If you have not been seen within 15 minutes pick up this phone". On the other end of that phone is a patient advocate. Their job is to troubleshoot why you aren't being seen. Now care teams get graded on wait times. That has helped tremendously. I went for labs and X-Rays for my last visit. My appt was for 10:30. I was done and out by 11:15. They implemented telehealth healthcare now. You see your doctor by phone for routine needs. My doctor is in an office in Little Rock Arkansas. I may be sitting in my home on the other end. That will be the civilian model in the not to distant future.

The third thing Trump fixed was taking care of the chronic and acute sicknesses brought about by things like chemical exposures etc. Those guys were getting denied over and over again. The VA drug it out for years and used the approach, they will die if we delay long enough. Now they are getting long term care through civilian treatment. They are still effed up from what they got in service, but at least they are getting care. They have made real progress in treating all of the chronic problems vets suffered in the Vietnam and middle east conflicts.

The biggest problem America faces and one you can see in these parallel healthcare systems is the problem of in the civilian side, healthcare is a "for profit" system. That always was and still is the problem.

The VA is not a "for profit" model. It's still inefficient in a lot of ways, and hopefully Trump will be able to sort through those over the next 4 years. But at its core, it's more about cost controls than trying to pick meat ($) off a bone. The VA is the largest healthcare system in our country. When it buys a medication, it buys a LOT of it. I was recently prescribed a blood thinner by a civilian care provider. They give you the piece of paper for you to get it filled. I went to a "for profit" pharmacy to fill it. $478 was what they said I'd pay. I thanked them and went home. Called my VA provider, scanned in the script, emailed it in, and it was delivered to my door the next day. I got my statement the next month. They paid $18 for that same Rx. And has it delivered directly to me.

Now the biggest problem the VA faces is the unexpected amount of healthcare issues the vets are bringing home from years of wars. It is overwhelming them again.
 
Bumblebee said:
This should have been here....this lady doesn't report to anyone but herself...

Click to expand...

Screenshot_20241213-075709.png
 
TallTom said:
His attorney is comparing billionaires free speech rights to the everyday American who wish to express free speech with their $$ in this particular American condition. They don't have billions to make a difference. But they may have this.
Click to expand...
Ah...gotcha now.....

I'm sure he will have the best of the best defending him.....all anyone can wish for is that means nothing and he gets what he deserves.....
 
Bumblebee said:
Ah...gotcha now.....

I'm sure he will have the best of the best defending him.....all anyone can wish for is that means nothing and he gets what he deserves.....
Click to expand...
If it goes to jury trial, and a jury of his peers says he gets a light sentence (I have little doubt he killed the guy), then it would be hard to argue how the citizens feel about it. Many many Americans have lost loved ones to a broken healthcare system. And the dead CEO runs one of the biggest perpetrators of it.

I was in a waiting room of an infectious disease office yesterday. About 15 people waiting. This topic came up. Not one person that participated in the convo had one good word to say about the company he represented. None came out in defense of the killing, but every person that spoke had a story of loss at the hands of UHC.

So in court if UHC can be shown to be responsible for many lives lost or severely diminished, this kid can garner some amount of sympathy from a jury.

It's sort of like if a citizen had murdered Jeffrey Dahmer, what jury would want to send them away for doing it.
 
TallTom said:
If it goes to jury trial, and a jury of his peers says he gets a light sentence (I have little doubt he killed the guy), then it would be hard to argue how the citizens feel about it. Many many Americans have lost loved ones to a broken healthcare system. And the dead CEO runs one of the biggest perpetrators of it.

I was in a waiting room of an infectious disease office yesterday. About 15 people waiting. This topic came up. Not one person that participated in the convo had one good word to say about the company he represented. None came out in defense of the killing, but every person that spoke had a story of loss at the hands of UHC.

So in court if UHC can be shown to be responsible for many lives lost or severely diminished, this kid can garner some amount of sympathy from a jury.

It's sort of like if a citizen had murdered Jeffrey Dahmer, what jury would want to send them away for doing it.
Click to expand...
Well, it's in the hands of the justice system now.....

Just like you say, what the average citizen thinks is not going to be an influence.

This was NOT justifiable homicide so we will see if the letter of the law prevails....
 
Bumblebee said:
Well, it's in the hands of the justice system now.....

Just like you say, what the average citizen thinks is not going to be an influence.

This was NOT justifiable homicide so we will see if the letter of the law prevails....
Click to expand...
He won't see a trial for a long time. And I wouldn't be surprised if they move it out of NY to avoid a sympathetic jury slant. So there can be a lot of spin over the course of that time. Possible insanity defense due to drug addiction for example.

And let's not forget. His parents are rich. Which buys good attorneys. If they don't want their little sweet baby to go down.
 
Bumblebee said:
Didn't even bother to read this huge post......brevity is your friend......if you want to get some sort of point across I suggest embracing this concept.
Click to expand...
I understand that some people can't bring themselves to read a five minute article, but sometimes it takes more than a sound bite to make a point. Unfortunately, most people nowadays only do sound bites. If they can't read it in ten seconds or even better, see a 10 second reel, they scroll past it. Pretty obvious that you are one of them.

Are you also going to call out TallTom for his long post? Oops. He's on your side so you will probably quote him on that.
 
OldBusaGuy said:
I understand that some people can't bring themselves to read a five minute article, but sometimes it takes more than a sound bite to make a point. Unfortunately, most people nowadays only do sound bites. If they can't read it in ten seconds or even better, see a 10 second reel, they scroll past it. Pretty obvious that you are one of them.

Are you also going to call out TallTom for his long post? Oops. He's on your side so you will probably quote him on that.
Click to expand...
You directed your short story towards me, his post wasn't....it would have been up to kiwi rider to do so if he chose to......

I had this conversation with another on this forum that would post gigantic posts and told him the same thing....the military taught me brevity is our friend......
 
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