Murder of UnitedHealth exec highlights public anger at insurers. Wall Street begins to worry.
The response to Brian Thompson’s murder has uncovered a seething public discontent with private health insurers in the US.
The response to the murder of a top UnitedHealth Group executive is revealing deep popular anger at the health insurance industry at large, and at UnitedHealthcare in particular. The extent of the anger seemed even to be unsettling investors, who were selling shares of large insurers on Thursday.
Details remained hazy 24 hours after the fatal Manhattan shooting of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance unit. Police have yet to track down the person seen in surveillance video shooting the insurance executive in the back.
Police late morning on Thursday posted a photo showing the face of a man they said was a “person of interest wanted for questioning” in connection with the murder.
The New York Times reported Thursday that bullet casings found outside the Hilton where Thompson was shot bore the words “delay” and “deny.” A separate CNN report said that the words were “delay” and “depose.” The New York Police Department declined to confirm either report, saying the investigation is still ongoing.
The reported inscriptions on the bullets were broadly taken to refer to alleged insurance industry tactics to put off making payments to cover claims for medical care.
The response to Thompson’s murder has uncovered a seething public discontent with private health insurers.
Though the proposals to cut back on private health insurance that characterised the 2020 presidential campaign have largely vanished from the mainstream political discourse in recent years, Americans’ anger at the current healthcare system, which is dominated by private players, remains high.
Investors seemed to recognise Thursday that new proposals to disrupt the industry’s status quo could now find fertile ground in public opinion. Healthcare insurance stocks fell Thursday, with UnitedHealth Group down 5.2%, Humana off 1.7%, CVS Health down 2%, and Cigna down 2.3%.
A poll by the healthcare policy group KFF last year found that nearly a fifth of U.S. adults reported having a claim for medical care denied by an insurer over the prior year. Another poll by the same group found that more than half of adults had a problem with their health insurance over the prior year.
In the wake of Thompson’s murder, often callous commentary on social media platforms Reddit and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, highlighted UnitedHealthcare’s claims denial practices.
As U.S. seniors have sought higher levels of medical care since the end the pandemic, investors have pushed UnitedHealth Group and its peers to minimise their payouts to patients to preserve earnings.
The aggressive approach that UnitedHealthcare and its parent, UnitedHealth Group, have taken to limiting the payouts they make to cover patient care has come in for particular scrutiny over the past few years.
An award-winning series by the healthcare news outlet STAT last year investigated how UnitedHealth Group used an algorithm to deny care to older adults.
And ProPublica, in a lengthy feature in early 2023, used internal company communications revealed in a patient lawsuit to show how UnitedHealth Group fought to stop paying for treatments for a young patient’s chronic condition, reporting that employees “misrepresented critical findings and ignored warnings from doctors.” Most recently, in October, a report by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that the rate by which UnitedHealthcare denied prior authorisations for post-acute care for Medicare Advantage patients had climbed to 22.7% in 2022, from 10.9% in 2020, as the company introduced automation into the process.
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