MANHUNT: The murder of the United Healthcare CEO in Manhattan this week ripped open the vitriol about health insurance companies. Internet posters did not mourn the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson … they vented their anger with healthcare coverage.

  One joke is that Thompson died because he was taken to a hospital not in network. People have spoken about being on the phone for days and claims being rejected out of hand. One healthcare worker posted on Redditt that,  “I have actually had to argue with UHC because they didn’t want to deem a procedure for a man who had been shot in the stomach as ‘emergent.”” 

  Another said, “UHC denied a pet scan for my husband when diagnosed with most aggressive form of melanoma stage 3. Their answer was: It’s not serious enough.”

  One woman said, “Sympathy requires a prior authorization and I’m sorry I have to deny that request.” And still another said, “Honestly, I am really surprised it took this long for a health insurance CEO to get murdered.”

  The investigation goes on. New York police found the backpack ditched in Central Park by the man who shot and killed Thompson in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. It’s another piece in a chain of video and physical that seems likely to lead to the identification and arrest of the killer.

  Investigators say that after riding a bicycle through central park, getting  rid of his backpack and possibly the gun, the shooter left his bicycle and took a taxi north to the 178^th Street interstate bus terminal and left the city from there. 

  The police have not found the gun that on video appears to have been a 9 millimeter pistol created during the Cold War. If it’s what it looks like, it was a B&T VP9  modelled after a pistol issued by the OSS to be a quiet and concealable assassination weapon. It holds five rounds, has a silencer, and sells for nearly $6,000. Investigators say the gun used in this murder may have been bought in Connecticut. They have a lot of leads and probably know things they are not saying.

THE TIK TOK DANCE: The social media app Tik Tok faces a January 19^th shutdown following the decision by a federal court to uphold the law that would force the Chinese company that owns Tik Tok to sell it. The law was passed because of fears that China uses the app to collect information on the 170 million Americans who use it for everything from posting dance videos to doing business.

  The law, signed in April, requires TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app by January 19th or face a ban in the United States. Opponents say the forced sale would impose on the First Amendment right to free speech.

   Tik Tok says it will appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. 

BIAS: The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times who blocked an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president said he’s going to introduce a “bias meter” next to news and opinion articles published in the paper starting in January.

  Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong said on the podcast of conservative commentator Scott Jennings that he had begun to see his newspaper as “an echo chamber and not a trusted source.” Soon-Shiong, who made his fortune in bio-tech, said he has been working with a team to create the so-called bias meter using technology from his health care businesses.

  Soon-Shiong owns a major newspaper, but knows nothing about writing for one. Nonetheless, he told Jennings, “you have a bias meter so somebody could understand, as a reader, that the source of the article has some level of bias,” he explained in the interview. “And what we need to do is not have what we call confirmation bias, and then that story automatically — the reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story based on that story, and then give comments.”

  A representative for the paper’s Newspaper Guild said that all Times writers already abide by standards of  “fairness, precision, transparency, vigilance against bias and an earnest search to understand all sides of an issue.”

DEADLOCKED:  The judge in the New York subway chokehold death case agreed to drop the most serious charge of manslaughter against Marine veteran Daniel Penny after the jury was unable to reach a verdict. The jury will still weigh a charge of criminally-negligent homicide.

  Back in May of 2023 on a New York subway train, Penny put a disruptive and threatening homeless man in a six-minute chokehold, presumably to control him, but ended up killing him.

ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIER: Donald Trump is sticking with his pick of former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. “Pete Hegseth is doing very well,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website. “Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!”

  Hegseth has been accused of drunkenness, sexual assault, and mismanagement of the finances at two veterans’ organizations. He is a now a devout Christian who warns about the influence of Islam in the world and has vowed to clear the Pentagon of “wokeism” and focus on the “lethality” of the military.

THE SPIN RACK: South Korea’s president apologized but did not resign following his brief declaration of martial law and an impending vote on his impeachment. — A Florida jury ordered an amusement ride manufacturer to pay $310 million to the family of a 14-year-old boy who fell to his death from their drop ride at an Orlando theme park in 2022. Despite Tyre Sampson being well over the 287-pound weight limit for the 430-foot-tall attraction, he  was allowed to ride and the ride maker was found at fault.   

BELOW THE FOLD: Actor and comedian Dick Van Dyke, 98, who danced 60 years ago in the movie “Mary Poppins,” sings and dances barefoot in Coldplay’s latest music video.

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