Troubling stuff. The People Cheering the UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting A cold-blooded murder has become, to many, an opportunity to vent. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-celebrations.html After her mother was diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer, Anna watched for years as she fought both the illness and the health-care system until her death in 2020. “The fight with the insurance companies was, in many ways, worse than cancer,” Anna says. “It took over my entire family’s life.” She recalls her mother’s time-consuming struggles to get new treatments approved. “It was just so maddening to know they were shaving years off my mom’s life because of the paperwork,” Anna recalls. So on Wednesday morning when she heard the news that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead in Manhattan, she had a perverse reaction. “I am ashamed to admit it, but there was a little surge of Schadenfreude,” says Anna, who, like several others in this story, asked to use a pseudonym to protect her privacy. She was far from alone. Across the internet and on social media, countless people expressed grim satisfaction or even glee at the murder of 50-year-old Thompson, who is survived by a wife and two sons. Authorities say he was killed in a targeted attack. Bullet casings recovered by police were inscribed with the words deny, defend, and depose, apparent references to how insurance companies deal with patient claims. “Today, we mourn the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down…. wait, I’m sorry — today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires,” one popular post on X read. Another on Reddit said, “I hope he still gets an ambulance bill that UHC refuses to pay.” UnitedHealth Group’s Facebook post sharing its statement on Thompson’s death received more than 46,000 reactions, with about 41,000 of respondents clicking the platform’s “haha” option displaying a laughing emoji. For many, Thompson’s death has been a means to vent and commiserate over the state of American health care and the insurance industry specifically, pitting multibillion-dollar corporations against patients who often have to fight to get even routine procedures covered — if they aren’t denied outright. Along with patients, health-care providers tangle daily with insurance companies, and they were not immune from the same feelings. A post discussing the shooting on a nursing-community sub-Reddit prompted a deluge of dark jokes. “I would offer thoughts and prayers but I’m gonna need a prior authorization first,” one user wrote. Claire, a psychologist, says she and many in her field were recently informed of UnitedHealthcare’s plans to cut rates for therapists who use the digital mental-health-care platforms Alma and Headway, causing several of her colleagues to drop their United-insured clients owing to the expense. “People have been feeling like executives or whoever oversees UnitedHealthcare in particular is directly harming if not contributing to the deaths of people, so I think that level of despair and helplessness perpetuates,” Claire says. “I never thought I’d be someone that would cheer vigilante justice, but it was pretty universal, at least in my community.” Diane, an oncology doctor, says her field has also suffered. “UnitedHealth Group in particular and Optum, which is their pharmacy benefit manager, make their money by profiteering off sick people, and we have a health-care system that is perfectly constructed to create great wealth and power in large corporations and is increasingly badly constructed to actually provide health care to patients,” she says. “The frustration from patients, from their caregivers, from the people who love them, from doctors, nurses, everybody in the health-care fields is just so huge right now. I’m saddened but not surprised at this event.” Though Diane is critical of the industry, she’s anxious about health-care-related violence: Over the past year, she has taken increased precautions at her own workplace to guard against the possibility of an active shooter. “I’m worried about the fact that violence in the country is just escalating so much,” she says. “That this is a symptom of everyone thinking violence will solve their problems, and that I find tremendously frightening.” Anna too is wary of glorifying violence. “I don’t believe there’s any justification for murder,” she says. “I think it sets a terrible precedent, and logically I know that a society that functions this way is doomed to collapse. Yet I still couldn’t temper my emotional reaction. I did feel a little bit of satisfaction.”
Suppose my neighbor, let's call him, I dunno, Gary or something, had a daughter, and some guy killed her. Maybe he killed her during an armed robbery at a gas station. Or maybe he ran over her while he was driving drunk. So now Gary decides to kill the guy that killed his daughter. That's not senseless. It makes sense to me. It's called revenge. It's unlawful. It may well be morally wrong. But it's not senseless. Is that what Putin and Netanyahu are doing right now? Presenting their arguments in a court of law? And what do you do when the courts cannot address the problem because the law itself is inadequate? I do not personally believe that the killing of Brian Thompson was justified. Even if wanted to argue that such a killing could be justified, I don't have enough information about this particular murder to form an opinion. But there are arguments that can be made that in some cases, killing someone is the right thing to do. People have been debating this for thousands of years. Do a Google search for the doctrine of just war. Some would argue that patients are currently at war with the insurance companies. When the protections and the solutions that should be available through the courts, the legislature and the regulatory agencies do not work, people are going to find other ways to address their grievances.
My dad was an insurance exec after leaving govt. He took me to an insurance conf where he was speaking and the takeaway was that they had a record low payout that year "net across all lines". The only industry where the relationship with the client is clearly oppugnant. If the public doesn't ID this kid then he's got a chance of walking away. They are looking for a weapon that wasn't used and he wiped the burner/wore gloves. Grabbing prints is a lost cause.
The problem of insurance companies intentionally delaying and denying claims that they know are valid has been around for a long, long time, and it happens with auto and homeowner's insurance, too. There is a technical term for it. It's called bad faith. And in many states, insurance companies can be held liable for massive damages--well beyond the value of the original claim--if a policy holder can show that a claim was denied in bad faith. With that being said... There is something fundamentally different about health insurance when compared to other types of insurance. With homeowner's insurance, auto insurance, and business liability insurance (e.g., someone slips and falls in your store, or gets food poisoning at your restaurant), the policy holder generally does not expect to use the insurance on a regular basis. With homeowner's insurance, auto insurance, and business liability insurance, you generally do not anticipate filing claims on a regular basis, as a routine business matter. The same can be said for life insurance and disability insurance. Health insurance is different. Even if you are generally healthy, you expect to file at least one or two claims per year, just for routine matters. And if you have significant healthcare needs, you are probably filing a claim at least once a month. And that changes everything. Health insurance is a fundamentally different product from most other types of insurance. I think this is not well understood, and not adequately accounted for when it comes to policy and legislation. This is one of many reasons that the whole system is broken. The business model and regulatory framework for health insurance is based on a concept from an earlier era, when health insurance was like other insurance products. It was something you only used when something unexpected happened. With most insurance polices, it's like buying a put option when you are holding the stock long-term. You don't want to use it; you don't plan to use it. You want it to expire worthless. This is certainly how most people think about their auto insurance and homeowner's insurance. That's not how health insurance works today. But the business model and the laws that govern it have not caught up to the current reality. Edited for clarity at 11:14 AM ET
Do pro hit men use decoys to send the police in the wrong direction? The shooter was well coordinated, emotionally neutral, look at his body language. The photos are similar but not exactly the same, so the finger prints won't match the decoy. The shooter's motive could be a misdirection, the real motive may be to silence an informant.
What I find troubling is that it has come to this, irrespective of the killer's motive. I refer to the toxicity of the relationship between healthcare insurers and their clientele. Initiated by the insurers.
So this CEO was not only a leader of a criminal cartel profiting off of insider trading but effectively a serial killer as well. Slain UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s tenure was marked by rocketing profits—and accusations of insider trading and coverage denial https://fortune.com/2024/12/05/unit...ompson-lawsuits-social-media-reaction-motive/
you have rick scott made his fortune in healthcare, you have dr oz sits in unh board, what could go wrong.