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Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting, was not insured by the company, deepening questions about a potential motive in Brian Thompson’s killing.
Its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, said that it had no record that Mangione was ever a client of its health insurance business, UnitedHealthcare.
Police have said that Mangione appeared to have suffered from a debilitating back injury. NBC News reported that posts from a now-deleted Reddit account linked to him described struggles with severe back pain. The account also posted on a subreddit about spondylolisthesis, a condition in which a bone in the spine slips and presses on the vertebrae below it.
Police said they believe Thompson was “specifically targeted” in the shooting in midtown Manhattan on Dec. 4. New York Police Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Thursday that Thompson may have been singled out because of the size of UnitedHealthcare. (UnitedHealth Group is the largest health care conglomerate in the country.)
“We have no indication that [Mangione] was ever a client of UnitedHealthcare, but he does make mention that it is the fifth-largest corporation in America, which would make it the largest health care organization in America,” Kenny told NBC New York. “So that’s possibly why he targeted that company.”
Some of Mangione’s writings may also serve as an indication of his mindset. Law enforcement sources told NBC News that a handwritten document found on Mangione during his arrest had the line “these parasites simply had it coming.” He also had a notebook on him, which allegedly included writings about targeting a CEO, two sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.
Mangione is currently being held in Pennsylvania where he has been charged with two felonies and three misdemeanors. He is fighting extradition to New York, where he faces charges of murder, forgery and illegal weapons possession. His lawyer said he will plead not guilty to all charges.
Thompson’s killing has sparked fear among corporate executives, though there has been little outward sympathy from an American public that has long struggled with exorbitant health care costs and nightmare experiences with insurance companies.
In an op-ed published in The New York Times Friday, UnitedHealth Group’s CEO, Andrew Witty, acknowledged the public’s unhappiness with the health system and wrote that Thompson had sought to make health care more affordable, more transparent “and more human.”
“We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people’s frustrations with it,” he wrote. “No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did. It’s a patchwork built over decades. Our mission is to help make it work better.”