Dem
47
GOP
53
Unless you spent yesterday spelunking, then you know that the search for the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has produced an arrest and criminal charges. The arrestee is a 26-year-old Pennsylvania man named Luigi Mangione; he's been charged with murder in New York and with forgery and possession of unregistered firearms in Pennsylvania.
He is, of course, innocent until proven guilty. However, authorities are pretty confident they have their man. Mangione is a dead ringer for the person caught on security cameras, and he was in possession of an anti-healthcare manifesto when he was arrested. He has also had extensive spinal surgery, so he's interacted with the healthcare system a fair bit. Oh, and illegal 3D-printed guns were found at his residence. What it boils down to is that Mangione is either the guy, or he's the unluckiest person on Earth right now, given how closely he fits the profile.
If Mangione is indeed the guy, then the question everyone wants an answer to is: What are his politics? As far as we know—and we've looked—nobody has uncovered a voting record, or even proof of voter registration, as yet. Based on the online clues that have been uncovered, such as his tweets on eX-Twitter and his reading list on the site GoodReads, he does not seem to be someone who really fits on the standard political spectrum. He's embraced some left-wing ideas and books, but he's also indulged in a lot of the sort of books and podcasts and the like that are favored by the "burn it all down" set. It is known that Mangione is the cousin of a Republican politician in Maryland; that doesn't mean all that much, but it does slightly discourage a "them durned lib'ruls" knee-jerk response. It is also known that the suspect is an Ivy League graduate (Penn) and that he earned multiple degrees in the sciences, along with a reputation for being pretty brilliant. If you run down the "known" profile—brilliant, member of an accomplished family, Ivy League, manifesto, angry about "the system," people are drawing comparisons to The Unabomber. We haven't seen anything that substantially controverts that comparison, as yet.
With that said, we would actually like to draw two other comparisons. The first is Charles Guiteau, the disappointed office-seeker who assassinated President James A. Garfield (admittedly, with considerable help from Garfield's germ-ignorant doctors). That assassination provided the impetus for the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act a couple of years later. And the second is George Floyd, the Black man who was executed without benefit of trial by police in Minnesota. Everyone knows the myriad changes in American society that resulted from Floyd's death.
To those comparisons, we add this, brought to our attention by readers J.L. in Albany, NY and S.K. in Los Angeles, CA. Right-wing twerp Ben Shapiro can always be counted on to take the side of money and power, and can always be counted on to blame all wrongdoing and all social ills on "the left." That is his brand, and that is what he did here. He went on an extended harangue on his podcast, which he then posted to eX-Twitter with this note:
The radical Left-wing celebrates the murder of the United Healthcare CEO. They're violent revolutionaries, and all it takes is a spark to light the tinderbox of their Marxist brutality. The 1970s was plagued by Left-wing political violence. It may be coming back.
Unusually, Shapiro got roasted for this... by his own followers. He has lived a life of comfort and privilege, and seems to actively avoid any information that might lead to empathy or to an awareness of the struggles of those less fortunate (remember, Z knew him in college). Anyhow, a vast number of conservatives piped up to advise Shapiro that America's private healthcare system is badly broken, and that people across the political spectrum have been denied healthcare that was necessary, and that they were entitled to, in service of the insurance companies' bottom line.
So, maybe we are at the start of a "moment" here, in much the same way that the murders of Garfield and Floyd sparked a "moment." There's clearly a serious problem, and people are getting angry and desperate. Those politicians who don't do anything about it risk losing their jobs or... worse. The same applies, of course, to the people who run the health insurance industry (and associated industries, like the medical devices industry).
That said, if the private insurance industry is failing, then the main alternative, as we wrote yesterday, is the expansion of public options. It is an objective fact that: (1) public insurance in the United States, most obviously Medicare, is more cost-efficient and that (2) the U.S. spends far more on healthcare than Western countries with public healthcare systems, and with worse outcomes. That said, the phrase "socialized medicine" is a boogeyman with many voters. This is why a different name is needed, like "Expanded Medicare," "New Medicare," or something else tied to the (popular) Medicare.
There are numerous Republican members of Congress who will strongly oppose any sort of change, whether because they have internalized the notion that "socialized medicine" is evil, or they have come to believe that public insurance will increase the deficit, or because they are in the pockets of Big Pharma. Yesterday, for example, Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO) did a bunch of media hits in which he said that it's really time to cut Medicare. This seems a particularly impolitic time, to us, to be making such declarations. Or, put another way, "Read the room, man." In any event, it shows how deeply entrenched the resistance to change is. (Z)