Shot In The Back
Did maddening back pain drive Luigi Mangione to murder UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson?
“And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.” - Charles Dickens
Police have only released threads of the manifesto they found when they arrested the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer, Luigi Mangione, but it looks the 26-year-old faced a life of debilitating back pain.
“The future may look dim when you consider living the rest of your life with chronic back pain,” says Pasadena trial attorney Scott Glovsky, author of the 2016 book, “Fighting Health Insurance Denials: A Primer for Lawyers.” “It affects everything from your ability to work to your ability to enjoy your life.”
Add a coverage denial and it is literally adding insult to injury, says Glovsky, who lists UnitedHealthcare among major insurers who deny back pain treatments.
Millions of Americans are living in chronic pain, or have lost loved ones to health care insurance denials. This explains, but does not morally justify, popular approval of Mangione’s alleged crime (as chronicled in the last release of Business Blunders).
Mangione’s manifesto mentions UnitedHealthcare and condemns health care companies for putting profits over care. But even if UnitedHealthcare denied his claims, Mangione was a gifted young man from a wealthy Baltimore family with whatever the resources he may have needed to pay for his treatments.
Maybe it wasn’t the money, but pain and rejection that set him off.
Mangione reportedly suffered from spondylolisthesis since childhood and exacerbated his misaligned spine after a surfing wipeout in Hawaii.
“He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible,” R.J. Martin, who had lived with Mangione in Honolulu, told The New York Times. “I remember him telling me that, and my heart just breaks.”
Mangione read several books about back pain, according to his Goodreads account, including Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery.
He also posted an X-ray on his X account:
He had back surgery last year and then disappeared from family and friends.
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