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
(UPDATE: The manifesto isn’t saying much.)
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.
The will to live
Given his pain, Mangione may have lost his will to live. Perhaps he believed his condition was unresolvable and that his future was no where near as promising as the life his prominent family may have afforded him
He was a high school valedictorian, an Ivy League graduate and worked as a software engineer. Friends described him as smart and charming. He might have traded all of it for a day of relief. He might have considered himself on the way out and wanted to do something he found meaningful on the way.
Let’s put it this way: No one wants to hear about anyone’s back pain. If Mangione had complained to the media about a denied claim for this, no one would have listened. We’re listening now.
“My back and hips locked up after the accident,” reads a July 2023 Reddit post that matches Mangione’s biographical details. “Intermittent numbness has become constant. … I’m terrified of the implications.”
A cowardly act
Boy, did Pennsylvania’s Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro give it to the online minions who have been cheering Brian Thompson’s assassination.
"This suspect here is a coward, not a hero," he said at a news conference on Monday, condemning support for vigilante justice “in some dark corners.”
Shapiro drew a comparison to the first assassination attempt on President-elect Donald Trump, which also unfolded in his state.
"That is not what we do in a civilized society,” he said. “That is not how you make progress in this country."
He’s right, of course. But isn’t it easy to feign the moral high ground when you are not in crippling pain?
Shapiro’s comments ignore the fact that health care debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy.
They’re also oblivious to the fact that more than 80% of Americans are pretty damn unhappy with health care costs that have risen much faster than overall inflation.
This animus will not fade away so easily.
A coward calling out a coward
Mangione allegedly shot Thompson in the back – indeed a cowardly act, as Shapiro notes.
Perhaps the killer felt it was appropriate to deliver a fatal dose of his own back pain to someone he felt partly responsible for his issues. I wouldn’t even try to justify his actions.
But do you know what else is a cowardly act? One that is circulating on social media?
Signing missiles.
Mangione allegedly signed bullets. Shapiro most definitely signed missiles.
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Those look like artillery shells.
Nothing good will come from this. Our government is owned by the highest bidder. We need a reform party.