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NEW YORK, Dec 11 (Reuters) - In the days since Luigi Mangione was charged with murder for gunning down a top health insurance executive, more than a thousand donations have poured into an online fundraiser for his legal defense, with messages supporting him and even celebrating the crime.

Most of the messages on the crowd-sourced fundraising site GiveSendGo reflect a deep frustration shared by many Americans over the U.S. healthcare system - where some treatments and reimbursements can be denied to patients depending on their insurance coverage - as well as broader anger over rising income inequality and soaring executive pay.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    44 minutes ago

    What a pile of shit this article is. Reuters, just take the mask off already.

    The crime he is accused of has been broadly condemned, but the Ivy League educated, photogenic 26-year-old has become an unsettling mixture of folk hero, celebrity, and online crush in certain circles. His support has only seemingly intensified since his arrest on Monday.

    Unsettling, is it? Is that your detatched journalistic opinion? Fuck.

    “They’ve made him a martyr for all the troubles people have had with their own insurance companies,” said Rodriguez, now an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “I mean, who hasn’t had run-ins with their insurance? But he’s a stone-cold killer.”

    Damn, THE John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City?! Going all out for the “I mean, who hasn’t had their mother’s cancer treatment denied” quote eh. Good call, Reuters.

    “It’s hard to underestimate the anger and angst people have with their insurance companies,” said David Shapiro, a former FBI agent and a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

    Spent more than ten minutes in the building did ya?

    ‘DEEPLY DISTURBING’

    Support was by no means universal, however.

    Several commentators on social media noted Mangione’s privileged background as a member of a prominent Baltimore, Maryland family, as compared to Thompson’s working class upbringing in rural Iowa . . .

    Ahhh there’s that b0Th SiDeZ that makes the world go round. Well done Reuters, no one can fault this one! And that bit about the healthcare CEO being raised a hardscrabble farm boy with dreams of the big city is pure fucking gold you soulless corporate sleaze merchants.

    “Our health system needs to be better … There’s a lot of things that should cause a lot of outrage,” Amazon Pharmacy Chief Medical Officer Vin Gupta said. “It’s also true that (the killing) should not have happened. There cannot be this false moral equivalence in our discourse.”

    That’s what the article closes with. I bet it took AI at least a minute to fine-tune the “false moral equivalence” so all the poor libz who think he’s a folk hero can begin to second-guess themselves and start the collapse of this whole sordid phenomenon whereby people are no fucking shit justifiably beyond outraged that everyone and their mom is getting screwed by this bullshit profit factory Nixon dreamed up.

    Great job Reuters, you really whacked all the moles on this one.

    • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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      5 minutes ago

      Several commentators on social media noted Mangione’s privileged background as a member of a prominent Baltimore, Maryland family, as compared to Thompson’s working class upbringing in rural Iowa . . .

      That’s not the same as condemning him. Just saying.

  • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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    24 minutes ago

    The US elected a convicted felon to the presidency and you’re shocked an alleged felon is somewhat popular? We are talking about a country that has become entirely obsessed with “hurting the right people”.

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      The most fucked up thing is right below his page, all the people needing money for healthcare related costs. Cancers/surgeries/live saving treatments…the fact that to survive in the usa you have to hope strangers send money to you is totally fucked.

  • aramis87@fedia.io
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    The crime he is accused of has been broadly condemned

    Uhh, no, it’s not.

    • Tangent5280@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      They paid one man to go to California and condemn it and another man to go to florida and condemn it. See, broadly condemned.

    • LukeS26 (He/They)@lemm.ee
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      8 hours ago

      Saying the crime was “broadly condemned” in the same article about the flood of money and support he’s received, with a large section of said article being about the praise given online, is an interesting way to frame things.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      The crime he is accused of has been broadly condemned found broad support crisscrossing social and political lines

      ftf them

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
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      9 hours ago

      The crime he is accused of has been broadly condemned by the victims peers, the public however has remained supportive of his actions.

    • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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      Shhhhh… they are trying to create a narrative! You can’t just go contradicting them like that!

  • Undearius@lemmy.ca
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    “They’ve made him a martyr for all the troubles people have had with their own insurance companies,” said Rodriguez “I mean, who hasn’t had run-ins with their insurance? But he’s a stone-cold killer.”

    Most of the developed world outside of America.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 hours ago

      It happens to everyone, once a doctor prescribed a medicine off-label and my Krankenkasse (german non-profit health insurance) refused to cover all of it. I had to pay 10 euros out of my own pocket.The pharmacist was super apologetic about the whole thing. /s

      • Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        As an American living in Germany I find it hilarious how Germans complain about the smallest cost of their prescriptions. I got some basic blood work done before my insurance kicked in and the doctor was going over the cost like I was going to flip my shit hearing it. I told him I was American and laughed. €25 for blood work and zero cost for just speaking to you? Sign me the fuck up. I paid $100 for a consultation about sinus infection that lasted 5 minutes at a general practice i Washington DC. You don’t scare me!

        • _cnt0@sh.itjust.works
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          Of course health care in Germany is magnitudes better than in the USA. But there are some weird exceptions to coverage. For example everything around teeth and some things regarding eye sight and allergies. Apparently not having my eyes and nose swollen shut all the time is a life style choice which costs me ~50 bucks a month. At least they think I should be able to breathe which only costs me ~5 bucks every 4 months (north of 300 without coverage).

          • weeeeum@lemmy.world
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            16 minutes ago

            Its still crazy that allergie treatment isn’t considered essential care. There were times my allergies were debilitating. The most sick I got in the last 6 months was spending a couple hours with a cat. I genuinely couldn’t work for days, and I was taking my allergy meds the whole time…

        • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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          I take adhd medicine in Germany that I also took in the US. In the US, I had to pay $50 for a doctor’s appointment, ~$200 for a drug test to make sure I was taking it and only it, and then $220 for one month of the generic brand. Then, when I hit my deductible in about June, the drug test was free, my appointment was $30, and the medication was $50. For this privilege, I paid $13k/year in premiums. In Germany, I get insurance for about €140/month while working part time at a bakery, then all my required appointments are free, no drug test, and I get two months of the brand name medication for under €16.

          I was making over $60k/year in the US, not living in a major city. I now earn a few euros more than minimum wage at a part time job in Germany. Things are significantly more affordable here.

        • kiterios@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          One of the most surreal experiences in my life was riding in an ambulance in Norway and having the EMT sheepishly explain that while the ambulance ride was free, the ER visit was going to come with a bill. He was equal parts embarrassed and indignant about it. The bill was the equivalent of $25.

        • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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          That’s because the costs are negotiated centrally, so healthcare is relatively cheap even if you have to pay for it. Some European countries are even having problems because some Americans found out that it’s often much cheaper to pay for a plane ticket, a nice hotel, and the treatment costs fully out of their own pocket in Europe than having the same treatment in the US even with insurance.

          • x00z@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            I have a friend who’s contemplating this. They can fly over as a couple and have a few weeks of vacation, get the operation and still have money left.

    • AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works
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      9 hours ago

      I was talking to a friend of mine in Canada about this recently. He has some minor gripes, but nothing like what I have. I told them my recent ER visit approached $15k in charges and they were aghast. They couldn’t even comprehend it. Like, their brain just broke and shut off. It made no sense to them.

      It shouldn’t make sense to us, either. We should have a similar reaction, but I think we’ve been slowly boiled so long that we don’t.

      Time to take it back.

  • saltesc@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    This whole thing has been excellent for countries with public healthcare systems under threat of the private sector trying to crack the armour. It sends a message to political careers, when the centre of the world’s capitalism clearly hates their current setup. It underscores to the most selfish of politicians that public support is more valuable than whatever form of “lobbying” deal a private company may bring to the table they don’t fundamentally belong at.

    • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Tbh, it’s probably a really weird week to be Canadian. Here’s confirmation about the importance of socialized hc, but also a bunch of uncomfortable “jokes” from your very unstable and militarily powerful southern neighbor.