Police hunt for UnitedHealthcare CEO's masked killer after 'brazen, targeted' attack on NYC street
apnews.com
Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was fatally shot in Manhattan. The company was scheduled to have its annual meeting with investors Wednesday.

I figured this is the correct community to post to since UHC is a multi-national company but if this is more suited to US News I can move it.

    • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
      41·
      16 days ago

      I would normally be upset about something like this happening, and would never advocate for it. But then I think about how many lives this person is indirectly responsible for ruining and I feel less bad lol

      • Gaywallet (they/it)@beehaw.orgM
        16·
        16 days ago

        At what point does indirectly become directly? I think what’s most important here is intent - this man was clearly knowledgeable enough to know he was causing harm and still chose to do so in order to increase shareholder profit. There is malice here no matter how you slice it.

        • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
          3·
          15 days ago

          Indirectly or directly doing it, they still had the same intentions either way (like you mentioned). Neither is anymore excusable than the other. One is just more legal.

        • rtc@beehaw.org
          2·
          14 days ago

          If a person refuses to see whether they are causing harm even unintentionally… refuses to even try… that’s all that matters. Responsibility lies there when the person causes harm. Same for persons who are aware and are personally fine with causing harm for gain. On the other hand, seeing and personally trying to reduce it, a person can atone for harm caused by oneself. These things cannot be forced. Attempts to be fully aware and not cause harm only brings happiness to the one making such attempts in the end. The ‘pains of life’, which is the purpose for the concept of ‘escapes’ to exist in the first place, go away completely. You could call such pains either the result of maliciousness or the naivety which aids people who want to cause harm.

          This is a decision everyone can only make by themselves.

  • aaron@lemm.eeEnglish
    31·
    16 days ago

    I can’t imagine being a billionaire CEO in this country, just walking around on the street, not expecting to get a bullet in my head. Tired of hearing people say Americans aren’t compassionate.

  • acargitz@lemmy.ca
    30·
    16 days ago

    This is tragic. Nobody should be gunned down in the street like this. I expect the NYPD, the media, and the politicians to spend exactly as much time and resources on this horrific crime as they do for every other individual that has been murdered in NYC this year. Not a fucking minute of police work more, not one fucking dollar of resources more, not one fucking article more, not one fucking minute of airtime more than any other person.

    • LukeZaz@beehaw.orgEnglish
      4·
      15 days ago

      This is tragic. Nobody should be gunned down in the street like this.

      I agree. Which is why we should address the problem by dealing with the absolutely ghoulish situation that is American health care, profiteering, and late-stage capitalism writ large. If there’s one thing I am very happy about, it is the fact that the number one thing being talked about due to this – besides the shooting itself – is the problem that caused it and so many other deaths; not a preference for vigilante justice, not guns, not terrorists, but a desire for profit above all else, regardless of how many die from lack of care as a result.

      To be clear, I suspect you agree, at least with the “ghoulish situation that is American health care” part. But what I want to highlight here is that I don’t think almost anyone wants to live in a world where things like this happen, much less one where so many of us are happy about it. In the end, though, we don’t get a choice. We live in that world, and it is far more important for us to worry about fixing that than it is for us to wring our hands when one of the 1% dies while the millions he’s killed got nowhere near as much sympathy.

      Murder is obviously bad. Even when it’s justified, it is a tragedy, and indicative of a failure to find a better solution. But this is a failure of the system people like Brian Thompson helped to create. On some other sites, I see a lot of people saying things like what you’ve done here. They spend time focusing on how his death is tragic, prefacing anything else they wish to say with statements to that effect as though they were warding against a curse. Individually, I don’t find this to be a problem. But when a lot of people are doing it? I think that’s an insult to his victims.

    • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      16 days ago

      Not a fucking minute of police work more, not one fucking dollar of resources more, not one fucking article more, not one fucking minute of airtime more than any other person.

      Is this sarcasm? I’m going to assume this is sarcasm.

      • acargitz@lemmy.ca
        18·
        16 days ago

        I’m dead serious. I oppose the misanthropic celebrations of someone’s killing. At the same I resent the classism of treating this particular killing as more important just because it is a rich person.

        • Kwakigra@beehaw.org
          5·
          15 days ago

          I’ve been thinking about this today. The chickens really are coming home to roost. The US military has spent decades dumping cash and assets into our media to convince young men that the best way to solve problems is to kill “bad” people. We’re primed to celebrate death already. Even in the 19th century when Anarchists were going around killing people who literally hired private armies to gun down strikers, the public was generally unsympathetic to violent retribution. Nowadays violence is the standard even when it’s visited upon the investing class that the military was established to serve. Americans see a bad person getting killed and we’re happy about it because we as a culture now believe that this is the way to solve problems. Considering that this is the public reaction, this could contribute to a solution where it wouldn’t in a more sane culture which would not have allowed a mass murderer like Thompson to kill thousands every year in the first place.

  • arsCynic@beehaw.orgEnglish
    28·
    16 days ago

    Finally going after vermin instead of schoolchildren. Good. Slow progress is still progress. Hopefully, consequently, toppling the toxic system that produces these vermin in the first place.

  • vga@sopuli.xyz
    9·
    16 days ago

    The gunman continues firing, interrupted by a brief gun jam,

    sucks when that happens