Award-winning director Michael Moore, who was mentioned by accused UnitedHealthcare assassin Luigi Mangione in his alleged manifesto, has vowed to “pour gasoline” on the public anger against insurance companies in the wake of the killing.
Moore, who directed the 2007 film SICKO, reacted on his Substack to Mangione allegedly praising him in his manifesto for his examination of the state of the U.S. healthcare system in the film.
“It’s not often that my work gets a killer five-star review from an actual killer,” Moore quipped in the post Friday, noting that millions have watched the film “including, apparently, Luigi Mangione.”
In the post, titled “A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies,” Moore wrote that he’s received countless requests to comment on the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, whom Mangione allegedly targeted over his frustrations with the company. Luigi Mangione Went Dark in 2023. He Returned Transformed PAINFUL YEAR Harry Lambert A photo illustration of Luigi Mangione.
“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,” Moore wrote.
He noted that the murder has stirred up a wave of “completely justified” anger at health insurance companies.
“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 continued.
Mangione was arrested Monday in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in connection to the killing of Thompson, who was gunned down outside of a hotel in Manhattan as he walked to a conference.
The accused killer was taken into custody with several fake IDs, a U.S. passport, as well as writings about the insurance industry, including the alleged manifesto.
“Frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain,” Mangione wrote. Luigi Mangione’s Family Hired Private Eye After He Vanished MAN ON A MISSION Josh Fiallo HOLLIDAYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - DECEMBER 10: Suspected shooter Luigi Mangione is led into the Blair County Courthouse for an extradition hearing December 10, 2024 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Mangione has been arraigned on weapons and false identification charges related to the fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City. Mangione is incarcerated in the State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania awaiting extradition to New York. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
In addition to Sicko, Moore is known for other documentaries like Bowling for Columbine, a film about America’s gun violence issue, and Fahrenheit 9/11, which showed the effects of 9/11 and the Bush administration’s response.
At the end of his post Friday, Moore announced that he uploaded Sicko for free on YouTube for all to watch.
“These insurance corporations and their executives have more blood on their hands than a thousand 9/11 terrorists. And that’s why they are scrubbing their executives’ profiles from their websites and putting up fences around their headquarters,” Moore said. “Because they know what they have done.”
Sicko is an outstanding and appropriately enraging film. Or at least I thought so when I saw it many years ago.
ETA: one of my first political conversations with family ever was me bringing Sicko up to my aunt who was a nurse. She was somewhat conservative and her reaction was “well I haven’t seen it but I heard a lot about it and it sounds absolutely like what I know to be true”. My more-conservative uncle chimed in to say that Michael Moore makes biased films so you can’t really believe everything in them. That sort of marked the first time for me experiencing someone casually dismissing reams of facts because of “bias”. So it was an interesting conversation at the time. I didn’t know what to say but I was thinking “so you’re saying you’re not really concerned with the true parts because you don’t like who it’s coming from?”