Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 523 posts

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#411

Post by klipklop »

ryandrake wrote: post #134
toomuchtodo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the comment that has been in my head since the news broke, and I feel like we are only at the beginning, like the pause before the first drop of a rollercoaster with the forward looking macro (political and economic tension, broadly speaking). Laws and rules only matter so long as we're all willing to believe they do.

Same here. With as many guns and victims of corporate greed that we have, I'm actually pretty shocked that we don't see this happening as routinely as, say, school shootings. I wonder if we'd see slightly more ethical behavior from corporations if their C-level staff and board members had to routinely practice lock-down drills because they were getting offed once a week.

Doubt it. They will just never leave their island compounds and other fortresses. There have been many news stories lately of these guys building up compounds and bunkers. Many of them off-shore and entirely unreachable by the general public.

Many of these CEO types never interact with the general public without many armed men around them. I would not expect them to act any more ethical than they currently are.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#412

Post by xnx »

delecti wrote: post #402
t-writescode wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why the US accepts Because we don't have another option. Your job dictates your insurance, not you, and most jobs explicitly search for insurance companies that don't end up costing them much (but cover enough that people still think they have coverage, maybe). There's stories going around right now about how BlueCrossBlueShield is going to be dictating the amount of time during a surgery that anesthesia will be co…

> Your job dictates your insurance, not you, and most jobs [...] This is answering the question with a very narrow focus on what any one person can do. Sure, when I filled out my job's open enrollment last month, there was no checkbox labeled "Evil Corporation Insurer (y/n)", but there's no inviolable law of nature that requires the US to be this way.

Exactly. There's a lot of talk about trade and other countries "ripping off he US", but almost no mention that the US pay significantly more for the same drugs sold in other countries.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#413

Post by klipklop »

nameless912 wrote: post #252
toomuchtodo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the comment that has been in my head since the news broke, and I feel like we are only at the beginning, like the pause before the first drop of a rollercoaster with the forward looking macro (political and economic tension, broadly speaking). Laws and rules only matter so long as we're all willing to believe they do.

I don't know how to write this comment in a way that won't land me in a CIA black site so I'll just start with a disclaimer that this post in no way celebrates or condones any violence, but I wouldn't be surprised if political assassination attempts go up 10-fold in the next 10 years. We already saw two different assassination attempts against Trump during the lead up to the election. You can read my older comments t…

I know you are half-joking, but it shows how worrying things are related to public discourse where you need such a disclaimer at the start of your argument.

The scenario you describe is rather frightening. Let's hope the "CEO class" (for lack of a better term) and the general public will allow reason and ethics to win out.

One thing that is for certain, there should be better legal limits to what companies can get away with. We need our justice system to get involved well before vigilante's start running amok. The US government should have stepped in a full decade ago to reign-in United Healthcare's misconduct and fraud.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#416

Post by Clubber »

jeffbee wrote: post #381
shadowgovt wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do value their lives and liberty and (for all the memes to the contrary) the police are very good at hunting down murderers of high-value targets because most challenges the police face are challenges of focus and resource-allocation and cities tend to authorize a spare-no-expense approach to something perceived as a direct attack on the fundamentals of the status quo. Consider the full-scale house-to-house ma…

Are they? I thought homicides committed outdoors, with a gun, between people of no or distant social connection were basically unsolvable. Even for a rich white victim. Unless this guy dropped his wallet, used an exotic caliber, or is somehow connected to a prior threat, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he is not found.

Apparently he went to Starbucks a few hours before the shooting. They have a surveillance photo of him, but he was wearing a mask. If he was dumb enough to do that, he might have been dumb enough to pay with a credit card. If this isn't the case and he keeps his mouth shut, he'll be awfully hard to find, especially if he doesn't live in NYC. We know he was a white male and that's about it.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#417

Post by TrackerFF »

thewinnie wrote: post #291
sergiotapia wrote: post #283

Just saw video of the shooting on X, the guy was cool as a cucumber. Racking a new round after every shot. Not a hint of desperation, fear or anxiety. He didn't even run off after shooting. https://x.com/Tr00peRR/status/1864376034465890417

Why did he reload every shot? Is it self made pistol? My best guess that insurance haven't paid his enough to buy glock17

A bit technical:

Automatic and semi-automatic weapons work the way the do because force of the round (recoil) pushes back the bolt carrier, which a spring will then push forward again. Shot is fired, bolt carrier goes back, spring pushes it forward.

Subsonic ammunition have less charge than regular ammunition, to reduce the velocity. This also means less recoil. Combined with the spring now being too stiff, the bolt carrier will simply not move back far enough to successfully chamber a new round. So you have to manually chamber a new round between each shot. One solution is to use a light / less stiff spring that is adjusted to the force of the subsonic ammo.

Same principle for when shooting blanks.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#418

Post by Clubber »

selimthegrim wrote: post #316
Clubber wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You keep saying killed, but there is a difference between letting people die and killing them. Using dubious legalese to deny a life saving claim that happens to cost say $200,000 that you took premiums for is pretty close. If you pay out of pocket, it might save your life, but you're bankrupt, your children get no inheritance, and you probably lose your house. That's a pretty insidious act for profit IMO. >Voters a…

You can save your house in a medical bankruptcy.

Depends on the state. Even if they can't take it directly, you still have to pay the mortgage, the property tax, the insurance, all the maintenance and upkeep with a new $200,000 bill and probably not having worked for a few months for recovery. I'm not sure how sustainable that is for regular people.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#419

Post by t-writescode »

delecti wrote: post #402
t-writescode wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why the US accepts Because we don't have another option. Your job dictates your insurance, not you, and most jobs explicitly search for insurance companies that don't end up costing them much (but cover enough that people still think they have coverage, maybe). There's stories going around right now about how BlueCrossBlueShield is going to be dictating the amount of time during a surgery that anesthesia will be co…

> Your job dictates your insurance, not you, and most jobs [...] This is answering the question with a very narrow focus on what any one person can do. Sure, when I filled out my job's open enrollment last month, there was no checkbox labeled "Evil Corporation Insurer (y/n)", but there's no inviolable law of nature that requires the US to be this way.

I agree! There's no inviolable law.

What there _is_, is too much pain and too many spoons that each and every person needs to manage every day, and most (nearly all) people are unable/unwilling to let even more important things drop.

We also have crab mentality in the US, where if one person hopes for, or even gets, something better, they're pulled back down.

And we have an efficient, powerful propaganda machine that tricks people into voting against specific areas of their interests - see "I love ACA, but I hate Obamacare" commentary.

The work to fix this is terrifyingly hard and *huge* and the people that will choose to fight and improve the situation will be making absolutely enormous sacrifices to do it.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#420

Post by talldayo »

cnst wrote: post #328
bhouston wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you're forgetting at least Jeffrey Epstein, Seth Rich, the Boeing whistleblowers, and probably many others? Even if we assume all of those are nefarious, that is much fewer people over a much longer period. If you have to add "probably many others", it feels like you are just extrapolating in your favor without evidence.

Aren't you just proving the point, though? You automatically assume all conspiracies from one set of countries to be unsubstantiated, yet all the other ones from a different set of countries to suddenly be substantiated and requiring no further proof? And don't even bother to refer to the latter ones as "conspiracies", whereas, in polite company, all the former ones, must explicitly be referred to as "conspiracies".…

To be fair, "Russian lawlessness" is a concept that predates the entire nation of America, even between Russian authors. People immediately leap to accusations of corruption because the USSR and Russian Federation are both well known for sending agents to kill dissidents living at home or abroad. The modern world has never known what Russia would look like if they embraced global accountability and tried to uphold basic decorum and due process for their convicted criminals.

Comparatively, faith in American institutions was only recently shaken by Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair, neither of which were even that bad in a relative sense. If the Clintons were tried and prosecuted for murder then you wouldn't have to label your words as a conspiracy theory, but for now that's exactly what they are. And to be honest, the evidence today doesn't feel any more convincing than the same shtick I heard 15 years ago...

Post reply on HN