GoFundMe closes Luigi Mangione fundraiser

GoFundMe, the crowdfunding site, has pulled all legal fundraising for Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of shooting and killing UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson in New York on December 4. But there is a platform that allows fundraising for Mangione to happen. forward and has a rather controversial history with right-wing causes.

“GoFundMe’s Terms of Service prohibit fundraising for the legal defense of violent crimes. Fundraisers have been removed from our platform and all donors have been refunded,” a spokesperson for the site told Gizmodo via email on Friday.

GiveSendGo, a platform that bills itself as “Christian” and has a long history of controversial fundraisers for right-wing figures, has not only allowed a fundraising for Mangione To stay up to date, it is currently listed on the home page. The fundraiser has raised more than $85,000 as of this writing.

It is unclear whether Mangione will even accept the money being raised on his behalf. When Mangione’s lawyer in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was asked about cnn about fundraising efforts earlier this week, he said he was unlikely to accept that money.

“I just don’t feel comfortable with it. So I don’t know,” said Mangione’s attorney, Tom Dickey. “I haven’t thought much, but I’m not looking.” Dickey continued, “Obviously my client appreciates the support he has,” but said “it just doesn’t sit right with me.”

Mangione reportedly wrote a short note explaining what he allegedly did, which was leaked to an independent journalist while the mainstream media refused to publish it. The memo says the health insurance industry “continues to abuse our country for immense profits” and describes its “corruption and greed.”

The alleged shooter has become a controversial figure in mainstream news coverage, with television and traditional print media portraying Mangione as a cartoonishly gruesome figure terrorizing Americans. But the conversation on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram has been very different than what you see on television. In fact, some people have been celebrating Mangione and his alleged actions, and people have even photoshopped his face to make him look like a Catholic saint.

And even people who don’t openly celebrate Mangione often use the assassination as a jumping-off point to talk about their own struggles with the U.S. healthcare system, which is the most expensive in the world and offers worse health outcomes than other countries. peers. There are approximately 26 million Americans who do not have health insurance of any kind, a staggering number and unique among developed countries.

All other rich countries have achieved universal coverage, sometimes through single-payer government health systems, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Norway, and other times through hybrid public-private systems such as Germany, France, and Australia. . Each system is a little different, but every other country with the resources to do it seems to have figured it out, except the United States.

The murder of UnitedHealth’s CEO has ignited a national debate about healthcare in a way the United States has not seen in years. And the parent company’s CEO, Andrew Witty, published an op-ed in the New York Times On Friday, he insisted that while the current system is “flawed,” his company is working to fix it. Notably, the article doesn’t mention a single actual reform or concrete way UnitedHealth is working to fix it, something that was repeatedly pointed out in the almost universally negative comments. The newspaper quickly removed the ability to comment.

Americans are angry about their health care. But it remains to be seen whether this conversation will continue in the future. After all, this is the country that just re-elected Donald Trump. We are not known for being particularly bright people or for having a long memory.