US Healthcare CEO Murdered - Please read mod note at OP

bnt

I'm quite surprised this hasn't been mentioned here, because both the incident and the reactions are major news in the USA. Early on Wednesday morning, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was killed outside the hotel where he was expected to deliver an address later that morning. The shooter had been lying in wait and shot Thompson several times with a silenced pistol, then rode away on a bike. There are pictures of the shooter in a hoodie and the investigation is ongoing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n7DLlmUtSA

That's bad enough, but the reactions online have been gleeful, because UnitedHealthcare has a really bad reputation as a healthcare insurer. Many comments telling us they have the highest claim rejection rate while making massive profits, and holding Thompson personally responsible. I expect some attempted copycat killings, especially if this guy gets away with it.

Mod warning 10/12/2024

I went through the thread and some of you are on the verge of warnings/bans. I would advise that you think twice before posting in aggressive tone, because I won't hesitate to ban you in order to keep the thread in (some sort of) order. And repeating the same arguments ad nauseam won't help your cause.

jackboy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058383476/us-healthcare-ceo-murdered

This is a strange case. Some elements of the hit seemed professional and some seemed amateurish. Hard to know if it was ordered by a disgruntled customer or someone is getting some benefit from his death.

creeper1

If they are such a bad insurer wouldn't people have the option of switching their provider?

H_Lime

Killing is bad when a guy with a gun does it and he'll probably be caught and imprisoned for life.

Killing is bad when health insurance companies do it but make record dividends.

This is acid reflux of a much larger problem in the US bubbling to the surface. The cost of insulin, deeming medical interventions unnecessary, pre exiting conditions, using algorithms to quell claim hot spots.

Let them eat cake has consequences.

j62

Another shooting in US

News at 11

Look on bright side at least it ain’t another school massacre this time

I see sheep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4uivPpzCGo

………

Hoop66

Surprising amount of glee from US posters on other sites re: this murder.

I can (sort of) understand. I don't think we in the civilised nations of Europe sometimes get quite how precarious people's health care can be over there, and how appallingly cruel some of the decisions that insurers make are.

That said, killing health insurance CEOs is not the way forward.

Perhaps if something good can come out of this, it will be a serious discussion about healthcare in the US.

NIMAN

THe shooter will be caught before the weekend is over.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122927908#Comment_122927908

Thats not how it works in America

Most Americans get their insurance through their work, and they don't get to choose which plan their employers enrol them in, which unsurprisingly, is often the cheapest option for them, or the one that looks like it has good coverage but may have terrible customer service and a reputation for denying legitimate claims

The American healthcare system is a dystopian nightmare from start to finish

Akrasia

The biggest problem in America is inequality: racial inequality, gender inequality, and, most of all, wealth inequality.

The wealthy are pillaging resources from the rest of the country at unprecedented rates while insulating themselves from the consequences of their actions. They live in private towns (gated communities) with their own private schools, hospitals, airports, and security. They socialize in exclusive resorts so far removed from ordinary people that it feels as if they live in a completely different country.

They do not rely on public services and can travel to access services unavailable or illegal in their local state. They rarely face legal consequences for their crimes, whether it's drug abuse, human trafficking (both sexual and otherwise), breaking environmental regulations, destroying ecosystems like rivers, mountains, and forests, poisoning entire cities, or causing thousands of needless deaths.

Even in the extremely rare cases where one of them is convicted, they seldom face prison time, receive preferential treatment in courts, and, if incarcerated, experience privileges unheard of for ordinary people. They seem entirely insulated from the negative consequences of their destructive economic activities and political interference, which almost always result in reduced wealth and welfare for ordinary citizens while increasing their own wealth and influence.

The public's reaction to the assassination stems from the fact that it represents one of the few instances where a member of the wealthy elite has been forced to face the consequences of their heartless and self-serving actions.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122927908#Comment_122927908

Your employer often picks your provider, plan etc.

And its not like here where if your employer a: offers fully paid health insurance (not common outside a few industries) and b: has picked a cheap plan where you can just decide to not bother taking the few hundreds after tax it saves you; because you need that insurance to get any form of basic non emergency care at all - and turning it down and paying for better yourself would bankrupt you.

Most "employer health insurance" here is a 10% group scheme discount on a bog standard plan, paid from payroll rather than fully funded; so while they may have picked a provider and plan, its not the same. My last employer got fed up with the admin and just gave everyone on the grades that got health insurance paid for a payrise equivalent to the cost to them.

bnt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122927916#Comment_122927916

The public reactions are what makes this more newsworthy. This article on Gizmodo is about the reactions, and the comments there are indicative.

The person who shot Brian Thompson is still at large, and the NYPD is offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction. But even that news made for another opportunity for people on social media to point out how they’ve been harmed by UnitedHeath’s policies. As one user wrote on Bluesky, “The reward out for the person who shot United Healthcare’s CEO isn’t even enough to cover 1/9 of the bill we got for 28 days of radiation.”

McFly85

This man earned his fortune on the back of human suffering so it’s no surprise that people don’t feel an ounce of sympathy for him. How many are dead because of his company denying coverage?

Violence shouldn’t be the answer, but without it what will change? It’s part of a wider issue in business at the executive level. CEOs in the US are happy to pay themselves exorbitant salaries while insulating themselves from any negative effects of the company. The worst case for them is they’re fired and given a multi million dollar severance package, usually popping up on the board of another multinational some time later. The eBay CEO was fired after the harassment scandal(which he at the very least knew about), $57 million severance. The Boeing CEO, who was culpable in the deaths of 500 people, fired and given $50 million in severance - more than the total given to the families of the dead.

There is simply no real incentive for CEOs to act ethically or responsibly when the worst thing that happens to them is they get to go and live out their lives in absolute luxury.

Unless the government start taking wealth inequality seriously, I could easily see more attempts happening.

Ten of Swords

There is a letter circulating on Reddit (so big pinch of salt needed) purporting to be from a doctor to United Healthcare giving out to them for denying a claim for anti nausea medication to a child undergoing chemotherapy

Boggles

Did I read somewhere the shooter had labelled his bullets?

Wonder who will direct this movie when it is made.

Mad story.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122928112#Comment_122928112

Yes that's confirmed. It looks like the words on the bullets are pointing to a book which is critical of the health insurance companies.

Ten of Swords

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122928112#Comment_122928112

Yep, seems to be a reference to an insurance industry expression.

A shell casing recovered from one of the bullets fired at Thompson had the word “depose” written on it, while “delay” was written on a live round that was ejected when the shooter appeared to be clearing a jam.

Police are exploring whether the words found indicate a motive, pointing to a popular phrase in the insurance industry: “delay, deny, defend.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/05/us/unitedhealthcare-ceo-killed-what-we-know-hnk/index.html

kowloon

I knew US healthcare insurers weren't popular but there are so many people celebrating this killing. Apparently one of the other insurers deleted the webpage with the identities of their board/CEO. I've seen posts on Reddit saying this was a long time coming. I don't think it's wise to turn the shooter into some sort of folk hero when nobody knows for sure the exact motive behind this.

Boggles

So we could be looking at a folk hero type.

Calahonda52

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122927956#Comment_122927956

I hope the deny folk here pay attention.

Short of this sort of action, how do you get their attention for the stuff they inflict on insured folk.

//'s to NI Civil rights movement and what it took to get that up and running

aero2k

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122928089#Comment_122928089

I didn't thank this post because I don't agree that violence is the answer, but the rest of it makes a lot of sense. I think it was OK until the 80's - before that CEOs earned a reasonable multiple of the average employee's salary. I once worked for a company where by tea time on 1st Jan, the CEO had earned more than I would for the rest of the year, and I was paid OK. We also had a disastrous CEO who lasted 10 months I think, and left with $10M in his back pocket. He didn't preside over any deaths but he did cause a multi billion $ loss. I don't know how it gets fixed, though.

ancapailldorcha

Thoughts and prayers.

Guy ran a company which had an algorithm that was denying a huge amount of claims. They knew it was faulty but didn't do a thing. UH has one of the highest denial rates of US insurance providers which is saying something.

Nothing of value has been lost. This guy was scum. I do not condone the deed but we abandoned feudalism for very good reasons.

arctictree

The whole health insurance industry in America is a disaster. Focus is on profit, not health. I'm not condoning the shooting but I can understand why someone would do this if a life saving operation was denied to a child/parent because of some technicality that their AI claims processing bot found.

The J Stands for Jay

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122927908#Comment_122927908

Usually linked to employment, so can't be changed

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122927983#Comment_122927983

And health insurance is so complex, with the dice so loaded in favour of the providers, that if they choose to misuse that power, then you get what happens in those bad cases in the US.

The situation could easily go the same way here, if we allow it. It's simply not possible to understand all the fine grained implications of a policy choice until you need to use it. I had an experience once here where a family member needed a series of expensive injections. We had a health policy with a relatively high deductible/excess at the time and (surprisingly to us) the excess applied for each visit rather than the whole treatment. To their credit, the company allowed us to change to a more suitable plan that ended up costing them more and us less. I doubt you'd get that level of benificence in the US.

the.red.baron

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058383476/us-healthcare-ceo-murdered

do you know how many people are shot every day in the us? its one person shot, never heard of him, never heard of his company

why it would make the news there, not to mind the news here is surely a mystery

tarvis

It is not very wise to see this as just a problem of the USA - inequality across the world, the wealth and greed of some major corporations and few high profile individuals is all over the media day after day.
One can push too many people too far -
There are always tipping points which governance is supposed to help countries to avoid.
Lots of elections , votes and flag waving but lots less governance it seems.

bnt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122928390#Comment_122928390

Would you like to try reading the rest of this page? The answers to your questions can be found within.

the.red.baron

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122928448#Comment_122928448

it doesn't really

I saw it on primetime last night, there are more important news topics to be covered here

because of twitter some people are obsessed with america

thats why there was no post on it

Brussels Sprout

Good article here about the reaction to this killing

If you have watched a loved one die because an insurance conglomerate has denied their life saving treatment as a cost cutting measure, yes, it's natural to wish that the people who run such conglomerates would suffer the same fate.

As fellow journalist 

Ken Klippenstein posted, "No **** murder is bad. The [commentary and jokes] about the United CEO aren’t really about him; they’re about the rapacious healthcare system he personified and which Americans feel deep pain and humiliation about."

This is what the media fails to understand. They don't see insurance CEOs who sanction the deaths of thousands of innocent people a year by denying them coverage, often coverage doctors deem medically necessary, as violent.

Journalist Kylie Cheung put it this way: "The way we're socialized to see violence only as interpersonal—not see state violence (policies that create poverty/kill), structural violence, institutional violence—is very deliberate."

https://www.usermag.co/p/yes-we-want-insurance-executives

plodder

Incidentally, it's not just about rapacious profit seeking corporations. A similar issue applies in state run health systems when it comes to doling out eye wateringly expensive hi-tech drugs. The same kind of life/death decisions get made. Anyone who thinks the answer is getting the private sector out of healthcare is very misguided. The answer is strong regulation imo.