Michael Moore Won’t Condemn the Murder of Brian Thompson

Musings from a part-time “pacifist”

Luigi Mangione felt supremely confident that Brian Thompson deserved to die, yet the man accused of murdering the UnitedHealthCare CEO also admitted he doesn’t understand the American healthcare system terribly well. So who does understand the system well enough to speak with authority?

According to Mangione, one such person is Michael Moore, director of the 2007 Oscar-nominated documentary Sicko, which the filmmaker says is “about America’s bloodthirsty, profit-driven and murderous health insurance system.” In his graded-F manifesto, Mangione namechecked the monoculture’s favorite documentary filmmaker. So naturally many reporters are asking the same question.

Moore kept it classy in his response:

It’s not often that my work gets a killer five-star review from an actual killer. And thus, my phone has been ringing off the hook which is bad news because my phone doesn’t have a hook.

No time like a murder to roll out some hacky wordplay. But after mining for chuckles, Moore gets down to business:

Emails are pouring in. Text messages. Requests from many in the media. The messages all sound something like this: “Luigi mentioned you in his manifesto. That people should listen to you. Will you come on our show, or talk to our reporter and tell them that you condemn murder!?”

Hmmm. Do I condemn murder? That’s an odd question. In Fahrenheit 9/11, I condemned the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi people and the senseless murder of our own American soldiers at the hands of our American government.

Moore continues the murder motif as he sounds off against the healthcare industry, the gun industry, and the actions of the US government and its precursors. “We slaughtered the Native people,” says Moore who then goes on to reference slavery, the Vietnam War, and the Israel-Hamas War in which America is supposedly “spending billions and billions of dollars right now to bomb and kill and starve and exterminate women and children in Gaza.”

Moore says it’s “an odd question” to ask if he condemns murder. What’s odder still is to pretend that that’s the question so many want answered. In the wake of Thompson’s murder and the disturbing lionization of Mangione, reporters aren’t ringing up Moore’s hookless phone to get the filmmaker’s take on the Middle East.

The question people want answered is this: Does Michael Moore condemn the murder of Brian Thompson?

Answering the Real Question

Moore could have responded with one sentence or even one word, but instead he tosses out red herrings (including musings on the proper word count of a “manifesto”), biographical notes (bullies mostly left Moore alone when he was growing up), and hot takes so cartoonishly dense they almost seem designed to bait readers into changing the subject:

If the purpose of “health care” is to keep people alive, then what is the purpose of DENYING PEOPLE HEALTH CARE? Other than to kill them? I definitely condemn that kind of murder.

Nobody ever mistook him for F.A. Hayek, but I bet even Moore could come up with a reason why it would be a bad idea to approve 100% of claims.

It’s tempting to take the bait, but I’ll do my best to stick to the question at hand: Does Michael Moore condemn the murder of Brian Thompson? Short answer: no.

But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he implies that he does. If we don’t want to hastily include Moore among the Americans who swoon over Mangione or support his alleged actions, what might we point to?

The first sentence in the following paragraph might provide some hope, but only if you ignore the next sentences.

People across America are not celebrating the brutal murder of a father of two kids from Minnesota. They are screaming for help, they are telling you what’s wrong, they are saying that this system is not just and it is not right and it cannot continue. They want retribution.

At one point, Moore writes “No one has to kill anyone,” but that’s just his segue into a call for socialized health insurance. A headline from a Deadline article highlights Moore’s line, “No one needs to die.”

It’s the kind of misleading framing that invites readers to assume that Moore did condemn Thompson’s murder. But consider the line in context, and it’s clear that Moore isn’t saying that Thompson didn’t need to die:

No one needs to die. In fact, that’s my point. No one needs to die – No one should die because they don’t “have” health insurance. Not one single person should die because their “health insurance” denies their health care in order to make a buck or Thirty Two Billion Bucks.

Not only does he fail to condemn Thompson’s murder, Moore gives observers plenty of reasons to believe he thinks the murder is justified. He writes that he condemns “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.” He says “insurance corporations and their executives have more blood on their hands than a thousand 9/11 terrorists.” Moore witnesses the outpouring of anger against the health insurance industry and calls for more: “I want to pour gasoline on that anger.”

It’s a strange position for a self-described pacifist to take.

Grading the World's Shortest Manifesto

Who’s to Blame?

The US healthcare system is a mixed bag of terrible and wonderful things.

Government created some parts and the private sector created some parts. Government pays for nearly half the system, and in some cases (for instance, Medicaid) it bankrolls huge parts of it on its own. For-profit incentives mix with endless anti-market regulations and mandates. Yet, as I’ve noted before, the typical monoculture position is to glance at the giant mixed bag and blame the private sector for any outrageous outcomes. That misdiagnosis lays the groundwork for “reforms” that almost always mean handing over more control to politicians.

Many people, myself included, disagree with Moore’s bluster.

We look at our semi-private, semi-socialist healthcare system and blame most of the dysfunction on the socialist side. We want market-based reform, perhaps something akin to what David Goldhill calls for in his excellent book Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know About Health Care Is Wrong. (And the lifelong Democrat is quick to add that his proposal includes plenty of features that lefties would embrace.)

Some people want to pull the American healthcare system in a more socialist direction and others want to pull it in a more market-based direction. We can resolve this dispute via debate and elections or we could opt for a more brutish approach.

How would Moore react if some disturbed libertarian gunned down a prominent politician who championed socialized medicine? What if someone who blames the death of a loved one on government regulations assassinated a government official? What if disgruntled Candadians furious about the thousands who die each year while waiting for surgery called for violence to overthrow the system Moore admires so much?

I doubt he’d want to “pour gasoline” on that kind of righteous rage.

Moore argues that government-provided health insurance is a feature of all civilized countries, but there’s a more fundamental feature of civilization—resolving disputes peacefully. There are many words to describe those who excuse murder when their side pulls the trigger, but “civilized” isn’t one of them.

Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His written work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Reason, and The Washington Post.

His recent film work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here on Substack or on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Google Play.

Ted and his wife and producing partner Courtney Moorehead Balaker are now making a narrative feature film based on Rob Henderson’s bestselling book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.