Pennsylvania Department of Corrections via AP
Luigi Mangione railed against the health insurance industry in a 262-word manifesto addressed to federal authorities. He was charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York.
Officials said last Wednesday, Mangione used a 3-D printed gun to kill the 50-year-old outside a hotel where the executive was staying. They added that shell casings at the scene featured the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose,” in what was potentially a reference to a 2010 book titled Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.
Mangione reportedly suffers from chronic back pain and was also fond of another book, titled, Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery.
On Tuesday, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote on his Substack that he obtained Mangione’s manifesto, whose existence had been reported but not released in full.
“I’ve obtained a copy of suspected killer Luigi Mangione’s manifesto — the real one, not the forgery circulating online,” Klippenstein wrote. “Major media outlets are also in possession of the document but have refused to publish it and not even articulated a reason why.”
In the manifesto, Mangione wrote:
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 [h]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.
Reactions to Thompson’s killing have been mixed, with some celebrating it because UnitedHealthcare has the highest denial rate of any health insurer and deploying algorithms to deny claims.
Mangione was arrested Monday after being spotted at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He is being extradited to New York. While entering a courthouse in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, he yelled out to reporters.
“This is extremely unjust, and an insult to the intelligence of the American people!” he shouted.
