“the shooting came at a time when health care seemed to be experiencing a bit of a surge in importance among Americans after the election. The share of registered voters who named it as the most important issue facing the country in YouGov/The Economist tracking polls had gradually declined from around 10 to around 7 percent throughout 2024, and even fewer, 4 percent, said it was the top issue specifically in determining their vote in the election. But after the election, that number has gone back up to between 8 and 11 percent.
A YouGov poll last week also found that more Americans, 49 percent, had an unfavorable view of the American health care system than the 42 percent who had a favorable one. Other polling suggests that Americans are as unhappy as they ever have been in recent years with the current state of health care. And while many Americans pointed fingers at the opposing party for the problems they see, more than 6 in 10 overall agreed that pharmaceutical and health insurance companies, as well as corporate executives like Thompson, were to blame for problems in the American health care system.
The U.S. remains unique among its peer nations in relying on a for-profit health insurance system and, as Mangione’s own writings alluded to, many Americans have expressed rage at a system that can deny coverage for people’s medical treatments while making shareholders and CEOs very rich. Despite decades of presidents trying to ensure universal access to health insurance, about 8 percent of Americans remained uninsured as of last year, and a higher percentage, about a quarter of American adults, said they or a family member had struggled to afford health care over the past year, whether they were insured or not.
By and large, Americans are unhappy with the costs of care and often find their insurance difficult to use. The share who rated the quality of health care in this country as “excellent” or “good” was just 44 percent in Gallup’s annual health and health care survey, conducted Nov. 6-20, its lowest point since 2001, when Gallup began asking the question. Even fewer, 28 percent, said the same about health care coverage — i.e., what insurance programs do — the lowest it has been since 2008″
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“A growing share of Americans in Gallup’s surveys seem to want the government to take action to improve health care access: 62 percent said it was the federal government’s responsibility to ensure all Americans have health care, the highest it’s been since 2007. Republicans are the least likely to agree with this sentiment — 32 percent said so, compared to 90 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of independents — but those numbers have increased by around 20 percentage points among all three groups over the past decade or so.
Perhaps surprisingly, YouGov polling found that around two in three Americans are at least somewhat satisfied with their health insurance plans — but that topline figure doesn’t capture a lot of nuance. For example, 89 percent of those with Medicaid were satisfied with their health coverage, compared to 75 percent who are covered by an employer-sponsored plan. Unsurprisingly, those who had had an insurance claim denied were also more likely to be dissatisfied with their coverage.
And despite many being mostly satisfied with the plans they have, a high number of Americans still experience problems using them. KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, found in a survey last year that 58 percent said that they had at least some trouble using their insurance in the previous year — including issues like denied claims or difficulty accessing in-network providers — and nearly half of whom said their biggest problem was not resolved to their satisfaction. Overall, 18 percent of Americans with health insurance had experienced a denied claim, and those were more common among people with private or employer-sponsored insurance. Around a quarter of those who’d had a claim denied suffered serious consequences, like a decline in health or not receiving recommended medical care.”
Did all the death and destruction wrought by Israel trying to get Hamas achieve anything? If Gaza is still ruled by a terrorist organization, won’t it just rebuild, then attack Israel, and this happens all over again?
“Kits package together some unregulated parts. But the mechanism that makes a gun go “bang” is regulated and must either pass through the same channels as a commercially manufactured firearm or else be constructed from scratch or from unfinished blanks. That’s not necessarily difficult, but it means there’s really no magic legislative wand that can be waved to make DIY guns disappear.
After the high-profile assassination of a political figure in 2022, Reuters’ Ju-min Park and Daniel Leussink reported, “the man suspected of killing former Japanese premier Shinzo Abe with a hand-made gun on Friday could have made the weapon in a day or two after obtaining readily available materials such as wood and metal pipes, analysts say. The attack showed gun violence cannot be totally eliminated even in a country where tough gun laws mean it is nearly unheard of for citizens to buy or own firearms.”
The weapon the assassin used in Japan was a crude but effective two-shot firearm that looked more like an old-fashioned zip gun than the 3D-printed pistol used to kill Thompson. But while not pretty, it was just as effective.
In 2019, TheFirearmBlog published a retrospective pointing out that during the zip gun heyday in the 1950s, “a mechanically inclined youngster might upon obtaining ammunition, most often widely available .22 rimfire, find that such rounds will fit into a section of suitably sized steel tubing, often a section of the salvaged car radio antenna. From then on it is a simple matter of fabricating a means of striking the rear of the cartridge while ensuring the entire assembly is held firmly together.” The article included photographs of homemade firearms discovered in the tightly controlled confines of prisons, crafted by inmates from found materials including pipes and plumbing fittings.”
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“A 2018 Small Arms Survey report on improvised and craft-produced weapons noted that such “weapons have been manufactured for as long as firearms have existed, typically by hand or in small workshops.” Among the weapons manufactured by craft producers, the authors noted, are “mortars, recoilless guns, and grenade launchers.”
Revisiting the subject last year in the context of Europe, Small Arms Survey noted that evolving technologies make it much easier to share plans for privately manufactured firearms and to create sophisticated devices at home without specialized skills.”
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“In September, Lizzie Dearden and Thomas Gibbons-Neff wrote for The New York Times about the worldwide proliferation of designs for the FGC-9, a partially 3D-printed weapon that can “be built entirely from scratch, without commercial gun parts, which are often regulated and tracked by law enforcement agencies internationally.”
As one expert told the reporters: “Now you have something that people can make at home with unregulated components. So from a law enforcement perspective, how do you stop that?””
LC: Yes, some people will always be able to build their own deadly weapons. But, most people can’t or won’t. Most gun deaths are from people who have the deadly weapon because it is easily accessible, not because they were determined to build the weapon by whatever means necessary.
“The New Orleans attacker who killed 14 people by ramming a pickup truck into a crowd built two bombs with a “very rare explosive compound”, senior law enforcement officials have said.
The compound had never before been used in a US or European terror attack, with investigators now exploring how attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar learnt how to produce the explosive.
Jabbar used the compound in two homemade bombs, which were found in coolers on Bourbon Street, where he carried out his deadly attack on New Year’s Day. The bombs did not detonate and it remains unclear whether this was due to a malfunction or lack of activation.”
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“Jabbar, a US citizen born in Texas and a former army soldier, had posted several social media messages saying he was inspired by the Islamic State militant group.
He had been living in a trailer on the outskirts of Houston before driving to Louisiana to carry out the attack, and was shot dead in a firefight with police at the scene.
The FBI has concluded that no one helped Jabbar to carry out his attack.”
“There have been over 322 school shootings in the United States in 2024, according to a report by data scientist David Riedman in his independent K-12 School Shooting Database. Riedman found that there have been at least 210 victims, both deceased and wounded.
The number is slightly lower than the report for 2023 of 349 school shootings — the highest number between 1966 and 2023. In 2023, there were least 249 victims reported as a result of school shootings.
These numbers do not include shootings on college campuses, but they do include gang and domestic violence, shootings at sports games and other after-school events, escalated fights, accidents and suicides.”
“there are two main reasons Americans tend to overestimate the extent to which crime happens: Media coverage of crime can often overstate trends and sometimes sensationalizes incidents that grab people’s attention. And law-and-order campaigns — the kind of campaigns that Trump ran, for example — are a mainstay of American politics and appear in virtually every election cycle in local, state, and national races.”
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“The United States is, after all, a relatively violent country and has a higher homicide rate than its peers. But while crime is a problem, lawmakers tend to react too quickly to crime trends, often by passing shortsighted tough-on-crime laws that bolster the perception of public safety by, say, putting more cops on the streets, but end up exacerbating the existing flaws of the criminal justice system, including sending poorer and more marginalized people to prison.”
“Mangione never mentioned being covered by or angry with United Healthcare specifically in any social media, according to multiple reports. But Samadani, who treats patients with spondylolisthesis, notes that many insurers require patients to undergo six to 12 weeks of physical therapy before the companies will agree to cover surgery or even imaging to diagnose the condition. And for someone with severe spondylolisthesis, physical therapy can be “excruciating” and won’t necessarily help, she adds. “It’s sort of like a torture, a mandatory torture imposed by the insurance company,” Samadani says.
And that’s if they are treated at all. Samadani says she’s seen multiple young patients who were initially turned away by doctors who didn’t believe they could have chronic back pain. “In the case of this particular kid, my guess is that he was in massive pain,” she says.”
“Luigi Mangione appeared carefree while enjoying a trip across Asia just months before he allegedly gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, suggesting he suffered a rapid unraveling in the lead-up to the brazen slaying.
One of a pair of friends who were vacationing across Asia told TMZ that they met 26-year-old Mangione by chance at a Muay Thai fight in Krabi, Thailand in April of this year. The trio quickly hit it off and decided to travel together.
After exploring Krabi together, the group parted ways when Mangione went to Phuket, while the pair of friends visited Malaysia. But they later reconnected for a road trip across Thailand, stopping off in Khao Sok and Bangkok, according to TMZ.
All the while, the source told TMZ, the software engineer did not show any signs of being a cold-blooded killer—in fact, he seemed like the typical young man enjoying the chance to explore a different country.
The source’s characterization of Mangione as a “super friendly, communicative, and open” person aligns with other accounts from people who had encountered the Ivy League graduate before he entered the public eye this week.”
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“There have been some signs, though, that in the months leading up to the shooting Mangione took a dark turn. His social media presence has revealed a suite of health struggles—as well as a penchant for radical political and social texts, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto.
Loved ones had expressed concern about Mangione on social media days before the murder, and The New York Post reported that his mother filed a missing-persons report for him last month.”
““I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy?””