UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot outside Hilton hotel in Midtown in targeted attack: cops - Just Part and Parcel of visiting a Big City

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A tweeter that is somewhat interesting (it delves into the consequences of the ransomware incident and how UnitedHealth bought tons of doctors officers for pennies on the dollar): https://x.com/RockyTrumpboa/status/1864735200611017163
Does everybody know the story with United Healthcare that was likely the start of all of this?
It seems that this is connected to a security breach that occurred back in February, affecting 100 million people. The breach targeted Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth, and hackers reportedly took huge amounts of sensitive data.
UnitedHealth paid $22 million in Bitcoin to the ransomware group AlphV/BlackCat, but even after the payment, they weren’t given back their keys. Instead of telling anyone, they waited, hoping the hackers would follow through. They waited months.
My wife was in the health insurance industry until recently, helping people get coverage for certain specific conditions. She told me that while United sat on their hands, doctors couldn't get paid. Patients were denied coverage and medical treatments. Pharmacies also struggled, unable to process prescriptions because of the disruptions. United claimed the problems were being addressed, but it dragged on for longer and longer.
Ultimately it got so bad that the doctors' offices were underwater. They came to United and complained. United told them it wouldn’t be much longer and agreed to "help" them with short-term loans... with interest. By mid-year, UnitedHealth had issued $8.9 billion in loans.
More time passed, and nothing changed. The doctors' offices went bankrupt. So United "helped" them again by buying them out for pennies on the dollar. UnitedHealth now owns an unholy conglomerate of doctors' offices and health insurance operations, something which my wife says is a massive conflict of interest.
The DOJ has been working on a fraud and insider trading case as a result of this series of events.
The CEO of UnitedHealth, Brian Thompson, was gunned down yesterday by a masked, hooded man using a silencer. He is still at large.
It is clear from footage that he is very familiar with his weapon, suggesting a professional hit. An image has been circulated of a man in Starbucks with similar attire, but it doesn’t appear to be the same man.
The assassin wrote the words "Deny, Defend, Depose" on the bullet casings left at the scene.
Was Brian Thompson about to testify? Was this politically motivated? Or was this revenge?…
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The list of potential suspects basically seems infinite at this point in time.
 
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Friend of Dorothy Parker said:
You're fantasizing there's a dreadfully abused, terrified family here? Based on? Jfc, I'm one of the louder mouths around here about some men being narcissistic shitheads, but this is quantum leap fantasy.
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Nigger, I'm not saying it's necessarily the case, I'm saying you're making an assumption that his family loves him. My guess, based on having spent too much time (more than zero) around high-level fortune 500 executives, is he's probably not the type of person people are actually gonna miss. I don't know that's the case, but you definitely don't know it's not, either. It's an assumption (or guess) either way.
PyrrhicRustle said:
Not the user to pull that on, tbqhwyf.
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I have no idea who this person is and I couldn't imagine giving a shit.
 
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Swamp_Donkey said:
I was interested in theory crafting about the best way for him to scare CEOs into not taking the position. Or I was interested in talking about what the shooter's actual goal is/was
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To be honest, it would need to happen again to another CEO for them to really panic and chill the screw the little guy routine. Right now they can shrug it off as a lucky break. They will calm themselves by upping their security detail.
It is a long shot that they will change their behaviour yet.
His motives are obvious if the bullets found at the scene are not some sort of red herring. Them being the title words from that book. Occam's razor says he is just a distraught man who feels this man's boardroom decision fucked him over. He decided to do something about it, instead of bluster.
The extraordinary part is the practical execution of the....execution.
Fucker channelled Agent 47, for the level of cold and professionalism.
 
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General Emílio Médici said:
Thanks to the kill this story is now getting a whole lot more public attention. It's gonna get so much worse than just one dead suit for UnitedHealth.
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The company will be nationalised and rolled up into Medicare and the remaining CEOs prosecuted, I’m sure President Harr-oh right never mind.
 
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Jobama said:
You see, this is my main issue with our modern billionaires. They don’t even build cool buildings like the gilded age ones did. I would be fine with debilitating wealth inequality as long as we got cool buildings out of it.
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That was back when the wealthy were closer to landed gentry than the citizens-of-nowhere/rootless cosmopolitans who presumably rule us.
 
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Malaika said:
Can a burger please explain to me how you can murder one of the cities elites in fucking midtown and not get caught due to the 20.000 CCTV's you have in that city?

This guy is in fucking Canada by now or something similar 100%, how is it possible they didn't catch him by now?
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Easy. You cover your face, don't leave fingerprints, and leave your phone at home. Considering how dependent the cops are on criminals being dumb the bar isn't exactly high when it comes to stumping them.

(Yeah, this is dated by now, but basic points still stand and we still aren't sure if Smiling Chad is him.)
BlewberryNausea said:
Fun fact: the CEO was a proponent of the ACA.
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Behind closed doors the health insurance companies were all for it. Mandatory coverage and mandatory coverage minimums meant they could both jack up their premiums in response to the additional things they were forced to cover as well as have a fixed price floor thanks to the mandate penalty.
Dyn said:
somebody told them that socialist countries just feed you to the dogs if you ever get sick
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Enjoy Canadian healthcare, abbo child.
XYZpdq Jr. said:
no, there was a guy, like WW2-ish, snipered the FWAUK out of a bunch of Russians and when asked later by press about it his response was like "I wouldn't know anything about killing people. I've only ever shot communists"
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That's Rafael Gan-Ganowitz, a Polish soldier of fortune who died at the ripe age of 70 in 2002, having survived multiple wars against Communist forces and the fall of the USSR. While he did boast about how he never actually killed a person since Commies aren't people, you're getting his sniper talents mixed up with Simo Hayah, who also didn't kill a single person, but that's because to a Finn Russians don't count.
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His smile and optimism eternal after killing an estimated 700 or so Russians... until he got half his face shot off by one of those Russians, which really killed his mood and gave him life-long psychological issues.
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You'd be fucked up too if you had to see that face every day in the mirror.
 
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Given the venal state of the US health insurance industry, I'm surprised this sort of thing hasn't happened before. It's difficult to imagine how anyone could pay through the nose for something that most developed countries are able to provide free at the point of service, have enough nous gain some cursory knowledge of the various political machinations which keep this status quo in place, and then not feel righteously angry at the ways they're being shafted as a consequence.

I would never endorse a violent act like this, but you'd have to be willfully blind to ignore the broader political context here, or pretend that the victim in this case was some totally innocent party who did nothing to invite what is clearly an act of political retaliation against a real injustice.

Interestingly, according to OpenSecrets, 90.24% of UnitedHealth Group lobbyists in 2024 have previously held US government jobs. Definitely nothing corrupt about that, surely?
 
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General Emílio Médici said:
I quickly ran to twitter to make fun of him, but cannot find the post. I think you are literally falling for fake news my dude. Elon Musk is retarded but not THAT retarded.
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Interestingly enough, he did post this fairly recently:

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(Not important enough to archive)

I think Musk could go either way on this one. He's a CEO, but not a health care CEO.

Reddit faking shit doesn't help.
 
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Malaika said:
Can a burger please explain to me how you can murder one of the cities elites in fucking midtown and not get caught due to the 20.000 CCTV's you have in that city?
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Because this is real life, not a TV cop show or Hollywood thriller. The police aren’t brilliant omnipotent auteurs, with every resource and technology at their fingertips. They’re underpaid jannies, stifled by red tape and legalities.
And that’s the average for western countries, multiply the institutional incompetence factor by 10 in America.
 
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