A Presidential Pardon for Luigi Mangione?
Like Trump's landslide victory, the people are demanding a new kind of justice.
By guest columnist Leonora Davalo
2025 PROMISES TO BECOME OPEN SEASON on socially irresponsible insurance providers and healthcare mega-corporations.
UnitedHealthcare raked in a tidy $16 billion last year. In 2024, it achieved its CEO-mandated profit target by employing an AI model with a 90% known error rate to deny insurance coverage to patients, some of whom died as a result.
The deceased had faithfully paid their insurance premiums, only to be shamefully cheated when they most needed the help their insurance policies were compelled to deliver by law. How this isn’t criminal is beyond most people’s comprehension.
Meanwhile, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson (net worth: $120 million) took home a whopping $10.2 million last year while many elderly Americans lived on canned pet food and cold rice because they had to choose between nutrition and their meds. The exploitative environment around insurance providers, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, and government, is literally killing people.
Of course, that’s what they want, isn’t it? To reduce the Social Security roles to free up more money for war making - America’s military budget currently sits at 57% of all federal revenues - and to pay back political campaign donations received from industrialized medicine.
At the end of the cradle to grave trajectory, COVID-19, which conspiracy theorists insist was a man-made virus unleashed on humankind for political and economic purposes, the funeral industry got its delightful payback. The cost of the average funeral in America is between $7,000 - $9,000. Multiply that by over a million in a single year. A million Americans who didn’t need to die. Most were senior citizens, wiped off the Social Security, Veterans Administration, and welfare roles.
The cost of the late Brian Thompson’s funeral is expected to be much larger that average, given the ostentation demanded by an individual of his stature; say, close to the cost of his assassin, Luigi Mangione’s legal defence? No, justice in America is pretty much the most expensive item on any menu. Not to mention the cost to taxpayers for a life sentence.
Mangione is not a terrorist
Justice is not only supposed to be blind, but it’s supposed to be unbiased. It’s also supposed to be compassionate, a quality uncharacteristic of the insurance industry generally and the healthcare insurance sector in particular. Nonetheless, Luigi Mangione has been charged with terrorism, not because he’s a Muslim like the 911 conspirators, but because, by virtue of a single symbolic act, he dared to challenge the stranglehold that corporatized medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, aided and abetted by greedy healthcare insurance executives, maintains on ordinary people.
Under New York law, an act of terrorism is "intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping."
I don’t feel terrorized or uneasy by millionaire CEO Brian Thompson’s assassination. Do you?
But I do feel uneasy about folks like white supremacist and Neo-Nazi Dylan Roof who massacred nine Black people attending church in 2015. Roof might have intended to start a race war to address the disparities in the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and civil rights, between whites and Blacks in this country, but he didn’t actually think that far. He just hated Blacks.
Mangione has been charged with terrorism while Roof was not, although race haters like Roof repeatedly throw fear into the hearts of 13 percent of the American population who, coincidentally, figure amongst the most economically depressed. The only people who fear Mangione are those amongst the one percent who own and control 42 percent of America’s wealth.
There were more mass murders (shootings that result in the death of four or more persons) in America in 2024 than days in the year. None of these school shooters, mall shooters, gang bangers, cop killers, and nice-people-gone-berserk have been charged with terrorism. Neither were any of the thousands of BLM-inspired rioters who burned Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd charged with terrorism.
And by the way, the API Style Guide dictates that the word Black be capitalized when referring to race while white remans lower case. The majority of America’s mass murderers are white. How mass murder isn’t terrorism is for better minds to explain.
Not an anomaly
The murdered Brian Thompson wasn’t an anomaly. Obscenely wealthy CEOs of the other top five health insurance firms are likely rushing to Walmart for bulletproof vests while restricting knowledge of their whereabouts and movements, fearing copycat killers. Instantaneous folk hero Mangione quite neatly took out Thompson, not for money, or because Mangione was mentally ill, but for a principle.
The Mafia blueprint for healthcare
The CEO of another healthcare corporation recently passed away of natural causes, although there were some who would have loved to take him out. I knew him, up close and personal.
Curiously, his flagship company was called United Home Healthcare (not any currently operating company of the same name), and in some ways it resembled UnitedHeathcare in product delivery and methodology. He lived in a lavish home, owned a Learjet, and kept a pilot on salary. The company fleeced the US government via fraudulent billing practices and that’s a no-no. It’s fine to cheat clients but Congress just tabled a bill increasing their own members’ salaries and enhancing their free (already gold-plated) healthcare coverage when millions of their constituents have none. So, better not mess with the Feds.
Personally, I’d shy away from any outfit with “United” on its letterhead. You know, like “United States of America” (just kiddin’).
Like most large corporations, the early incarnation of United Home Healthcare was too big, and too many depended upon it, for government to allow it to fail. When the shit hit the fan after the Feds stepped in, its client base was awarded to other companies in the same sector, ones like UnitedHeathcare Group. Its CEO and staff walked away scot-free from all criminal charges and liabilities.
This wasn’t the first time, either. Its CEO had earlier been indicted in another state for selling health insurance and pocketing the premiums. Again, no personal consequences. The insurance industry doesn’t like bad PR, so he walked. Moved to another state and set up a healthcare mega-corporation. He was actually a kind and loving person, but business is business. Like I said, I knew him up close and personal.
These so-called healthcare providers get away with murder. So, why should Luigi Mangione be penalized for simply acting out the will of the people? Didn’t Jesus use a whip to drive the money lenders out of the temple? Who gave Him authority to do so? Maybe some of those first-century crooks were injured or even died. We’ll never know.
And how many extra-judicial killings take place wherein police officers and others in authority take it upon themselves to do what the legal system seems incapable or unwilling to do: take the bad actors off the street? Or when the CIA effects a regime change in countries whose leaders we don’t like? Yup. People die.
This is, in fact, what the Italian Mafias do and why Italy cannot get rid of them. The Mafiosi makes periodic sweeps, vacuuming up dangerous psychopaths and annoying petty criminals (they’re bad for business) whenever street crime in any neighbourhood under their control goes off the charts, simply because the state itself consistently fails to deliver on the basic social contract. Nowadays, the “basic social contract” includes free universal healthcare in all European Community countries and the United Kingdom. If Europeans can do it successfully, then why can’t Americans? Aren’t we supposed to be the exceptional ones?
In practice, the American healthcare industry is a Mafia because, like most corporations, it’s run on the Mafia model; that is, power runs from top to bottom while responsibility runs from bottom to top. Profit targets are arbitrarily set by the CEO-Godfather. What this means is that the minions at the bottom of the pyramid are compelled to pimp more whores, traffic more drugs (and people), knock over more banks, and extort more small businesspersons to fill the Godfather’s envelope. The country doesn’t need a board of enquiry to determine how Brian Thompson amassed such enormous wealth. They just need to read Mario Puzo’s novel or see Francis Ford Coppola’s film version.
“Okay, so we achieved last year’s profit target without any major pushback. This year I’m raising the bar another 20 percent.”
The cult of the leader explains how healthcare industry CEOs can enjoy multi-million dollar annual bonuses and tens of millions in stock options and other perks, while contributing little or nothing to the social fabric, and sometimes less than nothing.
What’s with all these Italian names?
You knew it was coming, right? PELOSI means “hairy people” in Italian. MANGIONE translates as “glutton.” Just saying.
On February 21, 2024, the late Brian Thompson’s UnitedHealthcare discovered a cybersecurity breach. On the same day, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and her husband, Paul Pelosi, (net worth: $120 million) allegedly purchased $14 million in call options in Palo Alto Networks, the cybersecurity company that UnitedHealthcare contracted to deal with the hack. Twelve percent of one’s net worth is a lot to bet on a single horse in any race. The win net the couple a cool $31,900 before taxes.
Now, how smart is that? And what are the odds for a high-level Democratic Party politician picking just the right stock at just the right moment when Republicans have been calling for a ban on insider trading by members of Congress?
The only person who could have exposed Pelosi, and surely would have been subpoenaed by a Congressional investigative committee, was the late Brian Thompson. It’s a slam-dunk that the incoming Trump administration will move to investigate that suspicious trade and others made by their colleagues across the floor.
Maybe House Speaker Pelosi shouldn’t have publicly torn up Trump’s State of the Union Address on national television.
And you’re still wondering who killed JFK?
Brian Thompson owned eight (8) cars. We don’t know how many cars Nancy Pelosi owns but somebody on the internet seems worried about the stability of her marriage.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse
The cybersecurity breach that earned Nancy and Paul more money in a single day than many Americans see in a year. The amount they invested in a “hot tip” was far more than the average American earns during an entire lifetime.
The cyberattack that triggered the Pelosis’ windfall profits resulted in another windfall of (priceless) stolen data - names, addresses, social security numbers, and medical histories - falling into the hands of ruthless criminals who will now use the data to target UnitedHeathcare’s already vulnerable clients.
When placed in that light, Luigi Mangioni is looking more and more like a hero.
Like the enchanting Ghislaine Maxwell whose yet-to-be-released “guest list” threatens to upend Washington society, or Lee Harvey Oswald’s tax returns (revealing for whom he actually worked) that have been sealed for the past 60 years, hunky Luigi Mangione is unlikely to ever again see the light of day. Is Mangione just another “patsy” like LHO?
Spoiler: suicide alert!
Christ would have pardoned Luigi Mangione
Meanwhile, the US Justice Department, Food and Drug Administration, and Securities and Exchange Commission have launched inquiries into Brian Thompson’s accumulation of wealth and UnitedHealthcare’s practice of omitting information in regulatory filings and marketing campaign disclosures.
But hey, it’s Presidential Pardon time. I mean, outgoing President Biden has pardoned his son Hunter who is allowed to keep the $50,000/month he received from a Ukrainian energy company, as well as undisclosed amounts from China and other governments, simply because he’s the President’s son. Not to mention the gun charges et al. More pardons for other shady members of the Biden family are expected before the turnover of power on January 20, 2025.
So, why no pardon for Luigi Mangione?
Sure, the dude killed somebody. But wasn’t that just another way of delivering “the basic social contract” with a vigilante flourish? An act as American as Apple Pie? Judging by comments from citizen journalists and the public via social media, Mangioni should be awarded a medal, not a prison term.
Give him a cabinet post in the Trump administration. I mean, they acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse whom many consider a potential candidate for Congress, and nominated Governor Tim Walz for Veep despite Minneapolis burning, so why not a role in government for Luigi Mangione?
I wonder if he speaks Italian? Ambassador to the Vatican? In bocca al lupo…(google it).
Author’s note: Here’s the definitive article on folk hero Luigi Mangione. Kudos to author Eddie Huang. Follow him!
When you say United Healthcare raked in $16 billion, is that profits or gross income?