In response to the outpouring of anger at the for-profit health insurance companies for their predatory practices that was unleashed by the killing by Luigi Mangione of the UnitedHealth care CEO, there has been a lot of pearl-clutching by the ruling classes and their pundits and political lackeys in both parties, pleading with people not to think of the shooter as a hero and saying that ‘political violence has no place in America’. The last sentiment is utterly disingenuous. Political violence is as American as apple pie and has been used routinely by the ruling classes and their repressive state apparatuses when their power is challenged by ordinary people. What they are scared of is when their authority is challenged by protestors and when political violence targets them.

Apparently Mangione had issued a hand-written manifesto. Many of the mainstream media have refused to publish it in full even though it is very short and have instead quoted bits of it. They have not given any reasons why they did this even though there are many fake ones circulating. Ken Klippenstein says that he has obtained the genuine one and has published it and it is reproduced here in full.

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

Mangione approvingly mentions ‘Moore’ as one of the people knowing more about this issue than he does. I do not know who ‘Rosenthal’ is but ‘Moore’ likely refers to Michael Moore who in 2007 produced the documentary Sicko that took aim at the health insurance industry, and Mangione said that people should listen to him. So reporters and others have been besieging Moore to give a response and asking whether he condones the killing. Many people are confused about how to respond to this killing. Most people do not approve of murder. And yet they are also angry at the health system. Moore has provided a lengthy response that is worth reading in full. I will provide just a few excerpts.

Do I condemn murder?
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Throughout my adult life, I have repeatedly stated that I’m a pacifist. In fact, I have never struck another human in my life.
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Here’s a sad statistic for you: In the United States, we have a whopping 1.4 million people employed with the job of DENYING HEALTH CARE, vs only 1 million doctors in the entire country! That’s all you need to know about America. We pay more people to deny care than to give it. 1 million doctors to give care, 1.4 million brutes in cubicles doing their best to stop doctors from giving that care. If the purpose of “health care” is to keep people alive, then what is the purpose of DENYING PEOPLE HEALTH CARE? Other than to kill them? I definitely condemn that kind of murder.

After the killing of the CEO of United HealthCare, the largest of these billion dollar insurance companies, there was an immediate OUTPOURING of anger toward the health insurance industry. Some people have stepped forward to condemn this anger. 

I am not one of them. 

The anger is 1000% justified. It is long overdue for the media to cover it. It is not new. It has been boiling. And I’m not going to tamp it down or ask people to shut up. I want to pour gasoline on that anger. 

Because this anger is not about the killing of a CEO. If everyone who was angry was ready to kill the CEOs, the CEOs would already be dead. That is not what this reaction is about. It is about the mass death and misery — the physical pain, the mental abuse, the medical debt, the bankruptcies in the face of denied claims and denied care and bottomless deductibles on top of ballooning premiums — that this “health care” industry has levied against the American people for decades. With no one standing in their way! Just a government — two broken parties — enabling this INDUSTRY’s theft and, yes, murder. 

And now the press is calling me to ask, “Why are people angry, Mike? Do you condemn murder, Mike?” 

Yes, I condemn murder, and that’s why I condemn America’s broken, vile, rapacious, bloodthirsty, unethical, immoral health care industry and I condemn every one of the CEOs who are in charge of it and I condemn every politician who takes their money and keeps this system going instead of tearing it up, ripping it apart, and throwing it all away. We need to replace this system with something sane, something caring and loving — something that keeps people alive.
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After last week’s killing — which was just one more gun death in an unending sea of American gun deaths — our Democratic leaders all chimed in to say, “In America, we don’t solve our problems and our ideological disputes with violence!” and that there’s “no place for political violence” in America.  

No place for political violence? America’s entire history is defined by political violence. We slaughtered the Native people who already lived here. We enslaved and slaughtered the African people our Founding Fathers kidnapped and brought here. We — to this day — force Women in our country to give birth against their will.
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These insurance corporations and their executives have more blood on their hands than a thousand 9/11 terrorists. And that’s why they are scrubbing their executives’ profiles from their websites and putting up fences around their headquarters. Because they know what they have done. You can’t be the CEO of a company where you knowingly deny care to people — often leading to their deaths — and not have people mad at you, people hate you, people who have no pity for you because you have no pity for them.

But I have a solution. No one has to kill anyone. And it doesn’t cost anything. I have a solution that does not involve any violence. Unless violence to you means us taking money out of your rich effing pockets, unless violence to you means you can’t send your kids to USC or UPenn or buy a third vacation home or a fourth Tesla or a fifth Land Rover or another yacht. 

The solution is simple. Throw this entire system in the trash, dismantle this immoral business that profits off the lives of human beings and monetizes our deaths, that murders us or leaves us to die, destroy it all, and instead, in its place, give us all the same health care that every other civilized country on Earth has: 

Universal, free, compassionate, and full of life.

In 2007 he released the film Sicko that excoriated the horrible health care system in the US. I saw it when it first came out and found it both funny and enraging. Everyone should see it and Moore has now released it so that you can do so for free by clicking on the link.

If you want to first get a sense of what it is like, here is the trailer.