The famed documentarian Michael Moore said the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was a “senseless” killing—making his feelings on the attack known well before it was revealed that the suspected killer had referenced him in his manifesto.
Moore, 70, appeared particularly interested in the inscribed bullet casings that police said were left at the murder scene by Thompson’s assassin, which read “deny,” “defend,” and “depose.”
Moore asserted in a Substack post on Friday that the casing “could mean everything” in determining what drove the gunman to kill. Or, he said, it might mean “nothing.”
Either way, Moore used Thompson’s murder as an opportunity to resurface his long-held beliefs that the U.S. health care system is a predatory mess. In doing so, he also pointed out—via a graph that’s since been frequently reshared on social media—that UnitedHealthcare has the highest claim denial rate among the major U.S. insurers.
“No other industrialized country on Earth so willingly and heartlessly lets a few large corporations literally decide who shall live and who shall die—a decision that is based solely on profit motive,” wrote Moore.
Moore’s post also included a link to a 19-minute clip from his award-winning 2007 documentary SICKO, which exposed the measures health insurers go to profit off Americans while simultaneously denying them care.
That clip, which was posted to Moore’s YouTube on Friday and embedded in his Substack, was given the title: “SICKO Clip: ‘Deny, Defend, Depose.’”
Moore did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Mangione’s mention of the filmmaker in his manifesto was brief—only listing his last name in parenthesis as an expert on the “corruption and greed” of insurers. Also referenced as an expert was the ex-New York Times reporter Elizabeth Rosenthal, who wrote the 2017 book titled, An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back.
Luigi Mangione’s manifesto suggested that Moore and Rosenthal would be better equipped to speak about the issues in the U.S. health care system than he was.
“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,” he wrote. “But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain.”
Police have stopped short of declaring a definitive motive for Mangione. However, experts say the case’s evidence—between his manifesto, the inscribed casings, and the stuffing of a backpack with monopoly money—suggests that the killing was a targeted attack against Thompson and the health insurance industry as a whole.
Mangione allegedly wrote in his manifesto that “these parasites had it coming” and that he’d considered killing Thompson with a bomb. He allegedly wrote that he settled on using a handgun because it was the only way he could ensure there’d be no injuries to bystanders.
Mangione’s fingerprints match with evidence found near the scene of Thompson’s murder, police said Wednesday. Other evidence has started stacking up against the Ivy League grad, including that he was in possession of fake IDs, a silencer, and a “ghost gun” at the time of his arrest on Monday morning in Pennsylvania.
Authorities in New York are working to have the 26-year-old extradited back to Manhattan to face charges of second-degree-murder. While those proceedings play out, however, he’s being held in a rural central Pennsylvania detention center.
