The apparent assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Midtown Manhattan sidewalk Wednesday triggered an extraordinary outpouring of emotion. But there is not only horror or sadness that a 50-year-old father of two was shot dead in public by a masked man.
Thompson's death inspired a torrent of fury about how his insurance company and others treat — or mistreat — people in their times of greatest need. Some reactions, particularly on social networks, were downright rejoicing in the face of this murder.
What a stunning illustration of the hatred so many Americans feel toward for-profit health insurance companies, which too often make shareholders money by refusing to treat the sick.
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UnitedHealthcare is a particularly horrible example. It is infamous for its high denial rates and low reimbursement levels.
According to an investigation by the medical news site Stat and a federal lawsuit recently filed in Minnesota, UnitedHealthcare used a deeply flawed artificial intelligence algorithm to wrongly deny health care to elderly and disabled patients. Stat reported that the company “pressured its medical staff to cut payments for seriously ill patients …denying rehabilitative care to elderly and disabled Americans while profits soared.
ProPublica reported last month, the company used algorithms to identify people it deemed guilty of “therapeutic overuse” and deny mental health treatment. California and Massachusetts determined that the company violated federal law that requires insurers to cover mental health conditions the same way they cover physical illnesses. UnitedHealthcare denied claims for more than 34,000 therapy sessions between 2013 and 2020 in New York alone, saving the company approximately $8 million.
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To add to this unsavory picture, four of its most senior executives, including Thompson, have undergone careful scrutiny for $101.5 million in stock trades that they made after the company was informed that it was the target of a federal antitrust investigation, but before the news was made public and the price of the the stock does not fall.
Perhaps all of this helps explain why, as of Friday morning, more than 85,000 people had responded to UnitedHealthcare's solemn statement on Facebook regarding Thompson's death by a laughing emoji.
People on other social media platforms also rushed.
“All human life is sacred, so it is not appropriate to laugh when serious harm happens to someone,” wrote a Bluesky user. “The moral thing to do is to charge them hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“UnitedHealth's CEO suffers the same fate as many of his customers,” said another Bluesky user above photos of the shooter pointing his gun at Thompson's back before he took off on an electric bike.
Stories of terrible interactions with the nation's largest health insurer also poured in.
Elizabeth Austin, a single mother who lives 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 pandemic -19. After her chemotherapy caused nausea, Carolyn's doctor prescribed a nightly feeding tube to supplement what little she was able to eat when she was awake. She said United Healthcare would not pay for the feeding tube unless Carolyn did not eat any solid foods.
“I was like, 'She's 9!' She wants to eat food!' “, Austin told me. Unresponsive, the insurer forced Austin to pay $900 per month out of pocket for the device.
Later, when Carolyn developed a sensitivity to a sedative used during her monthly spinal taps, her doctors switched to another drug and the company again refused to pay, Austin said. She paid for that herself too.
Austin said she eventually developed a stress-related heart condition that required ablation surgery. She and her daughter are now healthy, 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 struggling,” she told me. “I don't think the CEO is to blame for my daughter's care issues, but it's wise to ask, 'Why did this happen?' Could this be a systemic problem? People buckle under pressure. »
At this point, the motive for Thompson's murder is only a matter of speculation. But ammunition recovered at the scene bore words often used to describe insurance companies' anti-patient strategies, including “deny” and “defend,” the Associated Press and others have reported.
In the 2010 book “Delay, deny, defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It,” Jay M. Feinman, a law professor at Rutgers, traces the evolution of insurance companies from generally useful organizations where adjusters – that is, human beings – were responsible for payouts in the antagonistic, algorithm-driven behemoths they are today.
In the 1990s, he writes, insurance companies like Allstate turned to the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to develop new strategies.
“McKinsey,” writes Feinman, “viewed claims as a ‘zero-sum game,’ in which the policyholder and the company competed for the same dollars. Each claim would no longer be treated on its merits. Computers would determine refunds and settlements would be offered on a “take it or dispute” basis. Feinman writes that McKinsey urged Allstate to move “from 'good hands' to 'boxing gloves'.”
Earlier this year, insurance giant Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield announcement that it would begin limiting reimbursements for anesthesia based on its own timelines for surgical procedures. The idea, according to Anthem, was to avoid overcharging. Predictably, doctors were outraged.
“This is just the latest in a long line of appalling behavior by commercial health insurers seeking to increase their profits at the expense of patients and doctors providing essential care,” said Donald Arnold, president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. told NPR.
On Thursday, after the outpouring of anger against health insurers sparked by Thompson's murder, Hymn reverse courseaccusing “widespread misinformation” about the proposed policy for this about-face.
No wonder there is so little empathy for Brian Thompson, who in many ways was a lovely human being. In his death, he became an unintentional symbol of the terrible things health insurance companies do to people for money.
Blue sky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Topics: @rabcarian
This story was originally published in Los Angeles Times.
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