Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is now facing new federal charges of stalking and murder, which could bring the death penalty if convicted.
Kathleen Sebelius, who led HHS under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2014 talked with the health policy podcast Tradeoffs about the power of the position, and the checks and balances Kennedy may face in enacting some of his priorities. "The [HHS] secretary is in a position to do a lot of good, but also potentially do a lot of harm," she says.
Governor Maura Healey defended her record Tuesday on Steward Health Care, saying she "did all that I could do" to address the now-bankrupt hospital chain's collapse, which a recent Globe Spotlight Team investigation found was enabled by years of lax state scrutiny. Healey placed the blame for the hospital chain's subpar care and massive financial losses on former Steward chief executive Ralph de la Torre, who resigned in October and is now a focus of a federal corruption investigation. "What happened with Steward is attributable to one man, Ralph de la Torre, and those around him who enabled and furthered greed and corruption," Healey said in an interview following an unrelated news conference Tuesday. Her comments came as federal and state lawmakers redoubled calls for greater oversight of health care companies in the wake of the Spotlight investigation. The report, which was published Saturday, revealed how years of weak scrutiny across several state administrations contributed to a health crisis that has harmed communities and cost lives. "There's plenty of blame to go around, and it dates back for years and years of lax oversight," Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a brief interview. "We need accountability throughout the system."
The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare's CEO has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Tuesday as they worked to bring him to a New York court from from a Pennsylvania jail. Luigi Mangione already was charged with murder in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson, but the terror allegation is new. Under New York law, such a charge can be brought when an alleged crime is "intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping." Mangione's New York lawyer has not commented on the case.
A poll found 41% of adults under 30 consider the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson acceptable, more than the 40% in that demographic who consider it unacceptable. Anger over health insurance companies has been in the spotlight after Thompson was fatally shot Dec. 4 in New York City. Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old, was arrested last week in Pennsylvania and faces charges in Thompson’s killing. The survey from Emerson College Polling found 68% of all respondents found the actions of the person who shot and killed Thompson unacceptable. But a startling 24% of those aged 18-29 found it "somewhat acceptable," and 17% of that group found it completely acceptable. Since Thompson was shot, first in the back and then again as he fell to the ground, a number of social media posts from people saying they do not have sympathy for his death have gained popularity.
Critics are torching a New York Times op-ed by the CEO of UnitedHealthcare's parent company, arguing that the $23.5 million-salaried executive's message overwhelmingly ignored the failures actively perpetuated by his company in the American healthcare system. UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty condemned the American public's gleeful response to the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was assassinated by a masked gunman last week on the streets of New York City just hours before an investor meeting. In roughly 600 words, he also attempted to deflect his insurance network's responsibility in the growing inequity in America's health care system, vaguely pointing to a "patchwork" of failures decades in the making while swearing that his corporate network—which reported $22 billion in profits in 2023 alone, nearly three times the figure reported by CVS, the second-most-profitable health insurance company that year—was consistently fighting to "deliver high-quality care and lower costs." But readers weren't buying it.