UnitedHealthcare CEO shot and killed in NYC

An astounding piece. Again, from someone who held extraordinarily prominent roles at the two most influential papers in the country and will also accuse people of eugenics if they don't wear a mask in a bookstore in 2024: "I don't want execs murdered. We do! The royal we! But not me."

Yes, "we" want insurance executives dead

No. And I have just as many insurance horror stories as the next guy. I just happen to think murder is bad. Wacky opinion. And that the posts--many, if not most, from folks who likely voted the same way as me on Nov. 5--on Twitter and Bluesky are a combination of boring (wow, so edgy!), pathetic and sick.

 

Reading that this is the weapon in play:

An Official Journal Of The NRA | Review: B&T Station SIX-9 Pistol

so, built-in suppressor, and not semi-auto at all. Bolt action.

 

Besides being morally wrong as can be, the murder of powerful people is useless. The institutions they head will easily replace them with other assholes that are just as bad.

 

But the next asshole will always remember why the job suddenly became open.

 

“Grapes of Wrath” explained that years ago. In that case, The Bank destroyed peoples’ lives.

 

I hung out in college with a criminal justice major who talked about the different types of inmates they encountered on prison visits.

“The murderers are the easiest to deal with. They’re happy because all the people they’re mad at are dead.”

 

UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting latest: New photos of suspect's face released

Never heard of these.

"Police believe the shooter used a B&T Station Six, known in Great Britain as a Welrod pistol, according to police sources. The gun doesn't have a silencer but does have a long barrel that enables the 9 mm to fire a nearly silent shot. The gun requires manually cycling ammunition from the magazine."

 

I've thought way too much about this story. Part of the reason I've thought way too much about this is because my partner worked for United Healthcare for 15 years, and I've never known anybody who hated a job more. Gannett treats its employees better than United Healthcare does.

I've thought way too much about this story because my 2008-2010 was daily battles being fought with a health insurance company over my preteen daughter's chemotherapy. My then-wife did not work outside the home, and it was a good thing, because she was working like hell inside the home to make sure that the insurance company lived up to its end of the deal. That should NOT be a fucking full-time job.

I've also thought way too much about this story because, what if it is a harbinger for instability to come in 2025? What if that was the motive behind it?

I mean, if you wanted to take out one person for whom almost nobody would express sympathy, you would choose an executive at a health insurance company. United Healthcare is the worst, but all of the rest of them are pretty much equally bad.

It leads to this:

The Taylor Lorenzes and Ken Klippensteins of the world who are all but rooting for the hit person.

An even larger number of people who are like, yeah, murder is bad, but health insurance is bad too, so, shrug emoji.

Eventually, there's some subset of the left that starts to believe killing is OK if it's, like, the last resort of accountability, the same way there is a subset of the right who believes killing is OK if the other choice is amending the Second Amendment.

Which leads way too quickly to, "Killing is OK."

It seems to me like, even though my sympathy for health insurance executives suffering any misfortune is less than zero, the line across which "Killing is OK" becomes a thing is a line that We The People need to hold.

 

are we talking about the lakers

 

I don’t believe in that fairy tale any more.

 

That is one obscure pistol. I've heard of it, but never seen one in person.