Luigi Mangione, the suspect accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last week, was not a customer of the private health insurer, but police say he had identified the company as one of the largest corporations in America in his “manifesto” writings.
Neither Mangione nor his mother were insured by UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest private health insurer, a UnitedHealth Group spokesperson told CNN.
“We have no indication that he was ever a client of United Healthcare, but he does make mention that it is the fifth largest corporation in America, which would make it the largest healthcare organization in America. So that’s possibly why he targeted that company,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said in an interview with NBC New York.
UnitedHealthcare, which employs more than 100,000 people across the United States and globally, is part of UnitedHealth Group, actually ranked fourth by sales in the annual Fortune 500 list of the largest companies in the US.
Investigators have been probing what may have motivated the suspect in the brazen early morning killing on December 4 – one that has garnered sympathy and online fandom partly because of people’s frustrations with the health insurance industry. The public sentiment has led companies to close headquarters, scrub their websites of top executives’ photographs and increase armed security details for key leaders as a safety precaution.
An NYPD intelligence report, obtained by CNN earlier this week, said the suspect appeared to be driven by anger against the health insurance industry and against “corporate greed” as a whole.
“He appeared to view the targeted killing of the company’s highest-ranking representative as a symbolic takedown and a direct challenge to its alleged corruption and ‘power games,’ asserting in his note he is the ‘first to face it with such brutal honesty,’” the assessment, which was based on Mangione’s “manifesto” and social media, said.
“We know the health system does not work as well as it should,” UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty wrote in an opinion piece published by the New York Times on Friday. “We understand people’s frustrations with it. No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did. It’s a patchwork built over decades.”
“Health care is both intensely personal and very complicated, and the reasons behind coverage decisions are not well understood. We share some of the responsibility for that,” the essay continued.
Witty said the company’s mission is to help make the health system “work better” and “find ways to deliver high-quality care and lower costs.”
“Clearly, we are not there yet,” he said.
UnitedHealthcare “approves and pays about 90% of medical claims upon submission,” UnitedHealth Group said in a release Friday, citing a need to correct “highly inaccurate and grossly misleading information.”
“Importantly, of those that require further review, around one half of 1% are due to medical or clinical reasons,” the release reads.
As investigators work to understand the motive in the case surrounding Thompson’s killing, authorities have executed as many as three search warrants in New York as part of their investigation, sources tell CNN.
A law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation confirms at least two of the warrants include the backpack found in Central Park and the burner phone found along the getaway route Mangione is believed to have taken from the shooting scene. Investigators also searched the hostel where suspected killer Mangione stayed the night before the shooting and the hotel room where Thompson was staying while in New York.
Mangione is being held at the Pennsylvania state correctional institution at Huntingdon, the oldest operating state prison in the state. The Department of Corrections says Mangione has taken his meals in his cell and is not interacting with other inmates, adding “all inmates are afforded time outside their cells even if they are a higher custody level.”
