By Garry Maddox
Filmmaker Michael Moore, who was named in a manifesto found in the backpack of accused killer Luigi Mangione, has declared that he wants to “pour gasoline” on American anger against the health insurance industry.
The director of such documentaries as Bowling For Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko wrote that media outlets repeatedly asked whether he wanted to condemn murder after his work was cited by Mangione, the 26-year-old who has been charged with the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson on a New York street.
“Some people have stepped forward to condemn this anger. I am not one of them”: Filmmaker Michael Moore.Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
In a post on the subscription-based platform Substack, Moore wrote that there had been an immediate outpouring of anger toward the health insurance industry after Thompson’s death.
“Some people have stepped forward to condemn this anger,” he wrote. “I am not one of them.
“The anger is 1000 per cent justified. It is long overdue for the media to cover it. It is not new. It has been boiling. And I’m not going to tamp it down or ask people to shut up. I want to pour gasoline on that anger.”
Mangione’s manifesto referred to how Moore was one of those who exposed “corruption and greed” in America’s for-profit healthcare industry.
In Sicko, his 2007 Oscar-nominated documentary, Moore unfavourably compared the American healthcare and pharmaceutical industries with universal healthcare in Canada, the UK and Cuba.
Moore posted that there were “a whopping 1.4 million people employed with the job of denying health care vs only 1 million doctors in the entire country ...
“We pay more people to deny care than to give it. 1 million doctors to give care, 1.4 million brutes in cubicles doing their best to stop doctors from giving that care.
“If the purpose of ‘health care’ is to keep people alive, then what is the purpose of denying people health care? Other than to kill them? I definitely condemn that kind of murder.”
Luigi Mangione is taken into the Blair County Courthouse after being arrested last week. Credit: Benjamin B. Braun/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP
Moore called for the replacement of the system with “the same health care that every other civilised country on Earth has”.
Police believe Mangione’s motive was animosity towards the health insurance industry and corporate America.
They found a three-page, handwritten document that expressed disdain for the health business. His Reddit comments indicated he had been struggling for years with increasingly debilitating back pain.
The week after the shooting, “wanted” posters with the names and faces of healthcare executives have appeared on the streets of New York, while hit-lists have circulated online with warnings that industry leaders should be afraid.
Florida woman Briana Boston has been charged with threatening to conduct an act of terrorism for allegedly threatening her health insurance provider during a phone conversation.
Police say she used the words “Delay, deny, depose”, referring to the words found on the bullet casings found at the scene of Thompson’s killing, adding “you people are next” at the end of a phone call in which she unsuccessfully challenged Blue Cross Blue Shield’s denial of her insurance claim.
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