Michael Moore, the Oscar-winning director of documentaries such as Bowling for Columbine and Sicko, wrote on Friday that he will not “tamp down” public anger against “America’s bloodthirsty, profit-driven and murderous health insurance system” stirred by Luigi Mangione.
Mangione was accused this week of being the man who shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of Manhattan. In his alleged manifesto, published by journalist Ken Klippenstein, Mangione wrote that his alleged actions were motivated by frustrations with the U.S. healthcare system, writing that insurance companies have become too powerful and thus abuse citizens for profit. He referenced Moore’s work — along with author Elisabeth Rosenthal — as examples of those who have pointed out this corruption.
In a lengthy Substack article — which he titled “A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies” — Moore wrote that the mention of him has resulted in requests for him to comment. “It’s not often that my work gets a killer five-star review from an actual killer,” he wrote. “My phone has been ringing off the hook which is bad news because my phone doesn’t have a hook. Emails are pouring in. Text messages. Requests from many in the media.”
Sicko, released in 2007, examines the U.S. health insurance and pharmaceutical industry in a comparative study with the universal health care systems in Canada, the U.K. and Cuba. It was nominated for best documentary at that year’s Academy Awards.
Moore went on to write that many of the requests inquired whether he would condemn the murder of Thompson. “After the killing of the CEO of United HealthCare, the largest of these billion dollar insurance companies, there was an immediate OUTPOURING of anger toward the health insurance industry,” Moore wrote. “Some people have stepped forward to condemn this anger. I am not one of them.”
He went on to write that the anger is completely justified, and that “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.”
Moore wrote that the anger in question “is not about the killing of a CEO,” but “about the mass death and misery — the physical pain, the mental abuse, the medical debt, the bankruptcies in the face of denied claims and denied care and bottomless deductibles on top of ballooning premiums — that this ‘health care’ industry has levied against the American people for decades. With no one standing in their way! Just a government — two broken parties — enabling this INDUSTRY’s theft and, yes, murder.”
Moore added that “yes, I condemn murder, and that’s why I condemn America’s broken, vile, rapacious, bloodthirsty, unethical, immoral health care industry and I condemn every one of the CEOs who are in charge of it and I condemn every politician who takes their money and keeps this system going instead of tearing it up, ripping it apart, and throwing it all away.”
The director finished his message with a link to Sicko, available to watch for a free, and a solution: “Throw this entire system in the trash, dismantle this immoral business that profits off the lives of human beings and monetizes our deaths, that murders us or leaves us to die, destroy it all, and instead, in its place, give us all the same health care that every other civilized country on Earth has: Universal, free, compassionate, and full of life.”
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