“It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents.”
Wack AF
Law enforcement has recovered a notebook that belonged to Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old who was charged with fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York last week.
Mangione was spotted at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Monday, leading to his arrest.
In addition to an extremely brief, 262-word manifesto, a full copy of which was obtained by reporter Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday, Mangione kept separate notes about his plans for the assassination in a spiral-bound notebook, as the New York Times reports.
In the notebook, the former data engineer describes going to the “annual parasitic bean-counter convention” to “wack [sic] the CEO,” likely referring to the annual UnitedHealthcare investor conference at the Hilton in midtown Manhattan.
The notebook also contains passages that justify his plans for killing Thompson, as well as related to-do lists of tasks, according to CNN.
“It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” he allegedly wrote in the notebook, reasoning that a bomb was a poor plan because it “could kill innocents.”
Beaning of Life
The expression “bean counter” usually refers disparagingly to an accountant or bureaucrat, often in the context of allocating finite resources.
That more or less aligns with UnitedHealthcare, a company that has seemingly done everything in its power to deny as much healthcare coverage as it can get away with, going as far as to develop an AI algorithm with that express purpose.
The corporation has the highest claim denial rate among insurance companies, leading to widespread outrage — and plenty of dark humor in the wake of Thompson’s murder.
Whether Mangione’s killing will have any immediate repercussions in the industry is unlikely. The outfit’s parent company’s CEO, Andrew Witty, has already made some eyebrow-raising remarks in the wake of the slaying, gloating about UnitedHealth guarding “against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or for unnecessary care to be delivered in a way which makes the whole system too complex and ultimately unsustainable.”
“So we’re going to continue to make that case, and we’re going to continue to do the work we do,” Witty said in an internal virtual address, also leaked by Klippenstein.
Meanwhile, Mangione is facing extradition to New York and has been denied bail.
Apart from the notebook, he was also found with what cops say was an an entirely 3D-printed “ghost gun,” as well as a fake ID he had previously used in New York.
Fingerprints recovered at the crime scene also match Mangione’s, per CNN.
More on the killing: Leaked Video Shows Insurance CEO Gloating About Denying Care, Calling Critics Delusional