The apparent assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk on Wednesday unleashed an extraordinary outpouring of emotion. But it’s not all horror and sadness after a 50-year-old father of two was shot dead in a public place by a masked man.
It inspired Thompson’s death A torrent of anger About the way his insurance company and others treat people — or mistreat them — in their moments of greatest need. Some reactions, especially on social media, have been downright gleeful about the murder.
What a stunning example of the hatred many Americans feel toward profit-seeking health insurance companies, which often make money for shareholders by withholding care from patients.
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UnitedHealthcare is a particularly terrible model. It is famous for its high rejection rates and low reimbursement levels.
According to an investigation by medical news website Stat and a recent federal lawsuit filed in Minnesota, UnitedHealthcare is using a deeply flawed artificial intelligence algorithm to wrongly deny healthcare to elderly and disabled patients. STAT reported that the company “pressured its medical staff to… Cutting payments for seriously ill patients …depriving older and disabled Americans of rehabilitative care as profits rise.
ProPublica reported Last month, the company was using algorithms to identify people it deemed guilty of “medication overuse” and deny them mental health treatment. Both California and Massachusetts decided that the company was violating federal law that requires insurance companies to cover mental health problems in the same way they cover physical ailments. UnitedHealthcare denied claims for more than 34,000 treatment sessions from 2013 to 2020 in New York alone, saving the company about $8 million.
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Adding to this unsavory image, four senior executives, including Thompson, It has been under scrutiny For $101.5 million in stock trades they made after the company was informed it was the target of a federal antitrust investigation but before the news became public and the stock price fell.
Perhaps all of this helps explain why, as of Friday morning, more than 85,000 people had reacted to UnitedHealthcare’s official Facebook statement about Thompson’s death with a comment Laughing emoji.
People also piled in on other social media platforms.
“All human life is sacred, so it is not appropriate to laugh when someone is seriously hurt.” one Bluesky user wrote. “The ethical thing to do would be to charge them hundreds of thousands of dollars instead.”
“UnitedHealth CEO faces the same fate as many of his clients.” Another bluesky user Above are images of the shooter aiming his gun at Thompson’s back before getting on an e-bike.
Stories of terrible interactions with the country’s largest health insurance company also poured in.
Elizabeth Austin, a single mother living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, told me she had a miserable experience with UnitedHealthcare after her young daughter, Carolyn, was diagnosed with leukemia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her chemotherapy caused nausea, so Caroline’s doctor ordered a nighttime feeding tube to supplement the little amount she was able to eat while awake. She said United Healthcare would only pay for the feeding tube if Caroline didn’t eat any solid food at all.
“I was like, ‘She’s nine!’ “She wants to eat food!” Austin told me. The insurance company was unimpressed, and forced Austin to pay $900 a month out of pocket for the device.
Later, when Caroline developed an allergic reaction to a sedative used during monthly lumbar punctures, her doctors switched to another drug, and the company refused to pay again, Austin said. She paid for it herself too.
Austin said she eventually developed a stress-related heart condition that required surgery to remove it. She and her daughter are healthy now, but the scars remain. She said she was saddened but not shocked to learn of Thompson’s death.
“These things happen because people are really suffering,” she told me. “I don’t think the CEO was responsible for my daughter’s caregiving issues, but it’s smart to ask: ‘Why did this happen?’ Could it be a systemic problem? People crumble under the pressure.”
At this point, the motive for Thompson’s murder is a matter of speculation. But ammunition recovered from the scene was scrawled with words often used to describe insurance companies’ anti-patient strategies, including “denial” and “defense.” news agency Others reported.
In the 2010 book “Delay, deny, defend“Why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it,” tracks Jay M. Feinman, a law professor at Rutgers University, traces the evolution of insurance companies from generally beneficial organizations where accountants — that is, humans — were responsible for payments to the adversarial, algorithm-driven giants they are today.
In the 1990s, he writes, insurance companies like Allstate turned to consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to develop new strategies.
“McKinsey viewed claims as a zero-sum game, with the policyholder and the company competing for the same dollars,” Fineman writes. “It was no longer possible to treat each claim on its own merits.” Compensations will be determined by PCs, and settlements will be offered on an “accept or sue” basis. McKinsey urged Allstate to move “from ‘good hands’ to ‘boxing gloves,’” Fineman writes.
Earlier this year, insurance giant Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Announce It will begin limiting reimbursement for anesthesia based on its time limits for surgeries. The idea was to prevent overbilling, Anthem said. The doctors were, predictably, furious.
“This is the latest in a long line of appalling behavior by commercial health insurers looking to increase their profits at the expense of patients and the doctors who provide essential care,” said Donald Arnold, president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. He told NPR.
On Thursday, after an outpouring of anger against health insurance companies sparked by Thompson’s killing, The anthem reversed courseblaming “widespread misinformation” about its proposed policy change.
No wonder there was little sympathy for Brian Thompson, which by many accounts he was Beautiful human being. With his death, he became an unwitting symbol of the terrible things health insurance companies do to people for money.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Topics: @rabkarian
This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.
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