Luigi Mangione is a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from an esteemed family in Maryland. With grandparents renowned for their success in business and philanthropy, he comes from a background of privilege and opportunity. After graduating at the top of his class from a prestigious prep school, Mangione attended the University of Pennsylvania, commonly referred to as Penn or UPenn. Often seen as the embodiment of Wall Street ambition, he now stands accused of a shocking crime: the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealth, in broad daylight outside a Manhattan hotel. What could drive a young man with the world at his feet to become a manifesto-writing assassin? And how far-reaching will the consequences of his OJ-level trial be?
Mangione suffered from chronic back issues, including spondylolisthesis — a condition where a vertebra slips out of place, causing severe discomfort and potential nerve compression. Despite undergoing surgery in 2023, friends report that Mangione often experienced debilitating pain, sometimes to the point of being unable to function. Chronic pain, known to affect both physical and mental health, can push individuals to desperate measures. For Mangione, an affluent man with no financial need for insurance, this pain appears to have revealed the harsh realities faced by countless Americans navigating a broken healthcare system.
America, the richest nation in the world for nearly a century, spends more on healthcare than any other industrialized country. Yet, we rank near the bottom in key health metrics such as infant mortality and life expectancy. One in every six dollars spent in this country goes toward healthcare, yet it remains the worst place among developed nations to face illness. How can a system so well-funded fail so spectacularly?
Liberals and conservatives may argue endlessly over the specifics, but neither can deny the core issue: America is one of the last countries to run a for-profit healthcare system. We as a nation stopped prioritizing the lives of our citizens the moment those lives threatened profit. Pharmaceutical companies, insurance providers, and even some hospitals and urgent care facilities bear responsibility. These middlemen, adding little intrinsic value to the system, extract billions in profits annually while ordinary Americans struggle to access basic care.
Why is that? The answer lies in moneyed interests. While Republicans champion free-market solutions and Democrats advocate for government-run healthcare, both are beholden to the powerful industries that fund their campaigns. Politicians should exist for the betterment of society, but instead, they exist to get in power, stay in power, and obtain more power. Inevitably, power corrupts them — because it is human nature. What begins as a desire to serve often gives way to the need for self-preservation, driven by archaic campaign finance laws and the influence of pharmaceutical and insurance industries. As a result, meaningful healthcare reform remains out of reach, leaving these industries to prioritize profit over lives.
Ask yourself this: if you held a lucrative job in Washington, D.C., where your decisions impacted every man, woman, and child in the country, would you not do everything in your power to keep that position — especially if your actions were technically within legal bounds? It’s easy to judge from the outside, but stepping into their shoes reveals how justifications snowball until politicians become everything they once stood staunchly against. This pattern of power’s corruption isn’t limited to the national stage; we’ve seen it play out at the state and even local levels, including in our own small town.
This is the system Luigi Mangione recognized as hopelessly corrupt. While some may view his actions as a form of protest, let us be unequivocal: murder is never justifiable, and Mangione should not be regarded as a folk hero. He stands accused of taking the life of another human being in cold blood. No matter how despicable we find UnitedHealth as a corporation, we must separate Brian Thompson, the CEO, from Brian Thompson, the person — a husband, father, and friend to many who now grieve his loss.
Reading Mangione’s manifesto for the first time left me with an unsettling feeling. I deliberately avoided it while drafting this editorial to ensure my thoughts were independent. Yet, when I finally read his words, I was struck by how closely they mirrored many of my own observations about the failures of America’s healthcare system. In one excerpt, Mangione writes:
“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 or 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 — likely referencing its rank among U.S. companies by market cap], behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy? No. The reality is, these corporations have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed 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 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.”
While I do not condone violence in any form, I can understand the anger that fuels it, just as I understand why Mangione has become a Robin Hood-like figure to many across the country. Brian Thompson, the human being, was undoubtedly a beloved husband, father, and friend. Yet as the CEO of UnitedHealth, he represented a system that has weaponized healthcare — prioritizing profit over patient care and contributing to untold suffering. This tension — between the person and the position — reflects the deeper frustrations many Americans feel toward corporate greed in healthcare.
Can we truly expect people to have sympathy for someone responsible for policies that denied healthcare to so many? Perhaps not. But it’s important to recognize that an insurance company, by design, is neither inherently “evil” nor “good.” Corporations exist solely to generate profits for their shareholders, often at the expense of ethical considerations or public well-being.
Capitalism, while the most successful economic system society has attempted, also allows companies like UnitedHealth to thrive under grim circumstances. Stories abound of hardworking Americans who do everything right — working steady jobs, paying their bills, taxes, and insurance premiums. Yet, when faced with catastrophic health issues beyond their control, they assume their insurance will protect them. Instead, they are met with the harsh reality of the free market: it is designed to prioritize revenue and liability, not life or death.
Viewed through this lens, it becomes clear why the assassination of Brian Thompson has catapulted Mangione to fame among ordinary Americans frustrated by corporate greed. His actions have sparked heated debates across ideological lines. Some conservatives, who initially condemned Mangione while celebrating figures like Kyle Rittenhouse, now acknowledge the systemic failures that drove his alleged crime. Though Mangione’s actions remain indefensible, his story resonates with those fed up with the increasing exploitation by corporate America.
As we continue to watch this saga unfold, let us set aside partisan divides and confront it as Americans united against the failures of the status quo. We must hold on to our humanity, rejecting the justification of violence while recognizing the urgent need for change. Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege, and this tragic event can serve as a catalyst for reform — if we choose to act. The choice is ours: to demand a system that prioritizes lives over profits or to allow this moment to fade, preserving the status quo that benefits only the powerful.
About the Author
Logan Andrew is the founder and editor of FreeWire, a Northwest Ohio-based digital media company dedicated to providing straightforward, fact-based reporting on local issues. With a focus on transparency and accountability, Logan works to amplify community voices while holding public officials to their word.
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