Writer who spoke to Luigi Mangione months before killing mentioned 'frustrations with US healthcare system'

Writer Gurwinder Bhogal revealed on CNN during an interview that he had spoken to Luigi Mangione for two hours, months prior to the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and said Mangione alluded to frustrations with the U.S. healthcare system.

CNN's Erin Burnett asked Bhogal about a video call he had with Mangione in May. Burnett said the timing was important because it was right before Mangione went "off the grid" in July. 

Mangione was arrested in connection with the murder of Thompson at a Pennsylvania McDonald's. Thompson was shot and killed outside a hotel in Manhattan.

"I mean, there are a couple of things which kind of make a bit more sense now. But I mean, I can’t say that I would have really predicted his behavior from that, from that video call. Um, you know, he did allude to his frustrations with the US healthcare system. There was a brief exchange we had where he compared, you know, he said that the US healthcare system was really expensive," Bhogal said.

WHO IS LUIGI MANGIONE, SUSPECT IN UNITEDHEALTHCARE CEO MURDER?

"I told him about the NHS, because here in the U.K. we have a free healthcare system. And he kind of seemed to idolize the U.K.‘s healthcare system. And I told him it wasn‘t quite simple because, although it was great, I’m a big fan of universal healthcare. I said that it’s not quite as simple as that because we have big waiting lists in the U.K., so, you know, there’s a bit of a trade-off. But I did say that the U.K. system was better than the US one, and he agreed with that," Bhogal added.

Bhogal also discussed some of the other things he remembered about Mangione from their conversation.

"He was very concerned with things like online porn, like he believed that a lot of men were not going out and meeting women because they were addicted to porn. He was really concerned about video games. He believed that people were not making accomplishments. They were not accomplishing things in the real world because they were getting sort of these dopamine hits from video games," Bhogal said.

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Bhogal said Mangione was concerned about the effect social media had on people. 

"And he feared this was happening to him as well. And one of the topics of the conversation, I mean, was about he wanted advice from me on how he could sort of reclaim some agency," he said. 

Several on the left have celebrated Thompson's death and have lauded Mangione as a hero.

Former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz told Piers Morgan during an interview that she felt "joy" in reaction to Thompson's death. She backtracked later in the conversation, but did say she didn't feel empathetic about his murder.