At the crime scene, investigators reportedly found words "depose," "deny," and "delay" on bullet casings, which led to speculation that the attack may have been motivated by frustration with UnitedHealth's policies.
NEW YORK, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The killing of an executive with the top-ranking U.S. health insurance company UnitedHealth Group in Manhattan has drawn both condolences from industry insiders and an outpouring of public anger against private health insurers on social media.
Police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday arrested Luigi Mangione, 26, accusing him of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last Wednesday morning outside a luxury hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
Mangione, an Ivy League graduate, was ordered held without bail and appeared in a Pennsylvania court Monday night.
At the crime scene, investigators reportedly found words "depose," "deny," and "delay" on bullet casings, which led to speculation that the attack may have been motivated by frustration with UnitedHealth's policies.
Speaking at a press conference after Mangione's court appearance, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said Luigi Mangione "is no hero."
"Violence has no place in our society, and its presence in our healthcare community is particularly devastating," Don Antonucci, president and CEO of Providence Health Plan, wrote in a LinkedIn post shortly after the slaying.
Yet, sympathy for Thompson has been overshadowed online by widespread frustration with private health insurers. Social media users have amplified grievances over industry practices, including prior authorizations.
UnitedHealth Group disabled comments on its condolence post for Thompson on Facebook, which a dominant majority of users reacted to with laughing emojis.
A post saying "Anyone who helps to identify the shooter is an enemy of the people" on X got 111,000 likes and 9300 retweets as of Sunday night.
Following Thompson's killing, there was a surge of highly engaged posts across social media glorifying the incident, some even calling for additional acts of violence, generating impressions in the tens of millions, said Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), an organization dedicated to identifying and predicting the spread of ideologically motivated threats, disinformation, and misinformation across social media platforms and physical spaces.
"Out of the top 10 most engaged posts on Twitter/X that mention Brian Thompson or UnitedHealthcare, six either expressed explicit or implicit support for the killing or denigrated the victim," said a report by NCRI on Thursday.
A relevant post on X, saying "Are we starting now then?," likely in reference to the start of a larger movement, garnered over 1.8 million impressions, with highly engaged comments referencing a "Class War," according to the report.
"We've gotten to a point where health care is so inaccessible and unaffordable, people are justified in their frustrations," said Celine Gounder, a CBS News medical contributor.
People have very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because these executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering, said Taylor Lorenz, a podcaster for Vox Media, on the social media site Bluesky.
"As someone against death and suffering, I think it's good to call out this broken system and the people in power who enable it," said Lorenz.
The display of public outcry over industry practices like "prior authorization" from health plans before a doctor could provide service is expected to pressure authorities to address urgent issues.■
