On December 4th, 2024, while walking along West 54th Street toward the New York Hilton Midtown hotel, where the annual UnitedHealthcare investor’s meeting would be held, Brian Thompson was shot by a hooded figure wielding a firearm. The first shots were fired at 6:45 am, and less than 30 minutes later, at 7:12 am, the CEO of one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai West hospital.
The man behind the murder–whose name is not currently known–quickly became the star subject of memes, comedic skits, and news coverage almost overnight. As well, he’s become a sort of folk hero for people around the country who have been spurned by insurance companies before. His jacket, a men’s sherpa, has become a popular item on the Macy’s website, where it is being sold half-off, with over 1,751 people viewing it at this moment. The words inscribed on the shooter’s bullet casings: “Deny, Defend, Depose” have also reached peak popularity on Google Trends. Yesterday in Washington Square Park, there was a UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter lookalike contest in which dozens of New Yorkers donned the assailant’s balaclava and aforementioned jacket.
Needless to say, the circumstances around the crime itself have contributed to its popularity in the media. Firstly, it occurred in broad daylight on a public street in one of the most populated cities on the planet, and second, the shooter used a silenced gun–something rarely seen in real-life murders. Moreover, to contrast the gunman’s slick and efficient way of going about the murder, the suspect had a certain amateurishness to him that suggested that he was no more than an everyday man and not the strictly professional hitman we see in television so often. For one, the suspect biked to and from the crime scene, bought a bottle of water and two protein bars from a local Starbucks just before the shooting, and even showcased his face on CCTV camera while flirting with a staffer at the hostel he was staying at.
The shooting, a case of a regular person putting the populist-anarchist slogan of Eat the Rich into action, has come as a wake-up call to many. Health insurer group Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield recently reversed one of its decisions to no longer pay for anesthesia care if a surgery or procedure goes on for longer than a certain time period, and thousands on internet forums and social media apps have taken to sharing their stories about how the country’s largest insurance companies have brought them misery, destitution, and death. As well, a spotlight has been shown on the healthcare industry, which has revealed some of its malicious practices enacted in the shadows. Practices that bring forth the question of how an assassination like this has only just now been carried out.
Thompson’s murder is not the start of this story. In fact, it’s not even the only murder in it.
For years now, UnitedHealthcare (UHC) has acted not as the thing it advertises itself to consumers as–a service providing health insurance–but instead as a hurdle many must overcome in order to receive it.
Despite its annual revenue of over $20.64 billion, UHC is notorious for its abnormally large denial rate for patient claims, with approximately 1 out of every 3 claims being rejected for reasons that can be considered petty–to downright dubious ones, listing them under categories such as lack of necessity and lack of symptoms–even in situations where the patient shows all the symptoms needed to qualify for coverage on a certain medication. In a few cases, claims made to cover hospital bills have even been denied due to the patient in question being deceased.
Under Thompson’s leadership, UHC’s denial rate for Medicare Advantage plans has nearly tripled, going from 8% in 2019 to 22.7% in 2022.
In addition to arbitrarily denying claims, UHC has been noted to frequently overbill Medicare and other groups. In 2011, a whistleblower lawsuit claimed that the company defrauded Medicare by consciously raising risk adjustment so that it would be paid more. In 2021, after an investigation was launched by the U.S. government on UHC, it was found that the company tended to sift through patients’ files to find additional illnesses–cured or not–and use them to increase billing costs. It is undeniable that these nefarious practices are part of the reason why Brian Thompson (who had been part of UnitedHealthcare since April 2021) received compensation of $10.2 million in 2023.
In 2007, the Lewin Group, a consulting firm specializing in healthcare, was purchased by Ingenix, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group (which is also the parent company of UnitedHealthcare). Though the Lewin Group has not been seen to outright advocate for bills, their research tends to be used by politicians seeking to go against healthcare reform bills. In 2009, UHC spent nearly $5 million in lobbying various political candidates during a time when the Affordable Care Act–which would force insurers to spend at least 85% of premiums on care and quality improvement–was being debated.
UnitedHealthcare’s history of being caught doing wrong does not end there, however. In 2019, UHC paid $1 million to settle Pennsylvania regulators’ accusations of state and federal violations when settling claims brought forth by those dealing with substance abuse and autism spectrum disorders. Not long after, another lawsuit was filed against United Behavioral Health–UHC’s mental health subsidiary–for the wrongful rejections of 157 employer group health plan members’ claims between 2011 and 2017. The lawsuit ended in UHC paying over $5 million to settle it.
The questions that come to mind upon reviewing UHC’s history are first, why a corporation would commit such horrific acts (the answer being simple: they are a corporation.) And secondly, how. The answer to that has been given to us through an inspection conducted by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in which it was revealed that UnitedHealthcare and various other insurers have been using an AI-powered algorithm called nH Predict to automatically deny patients after correlating patient health records with others. nH Predict has been found to have a 90% error rate. Furthermore, UnitedHealth Group has also been accused of using other algorithms plagued with racial bias, where non-white patients were deemed “healthier” than their equally sick white counterparts.
It is well known to the average American that the healthcare system is rotten to the core, but Thompson’s death has urged many to peel back a layer of our most-used health insurers and look at its putrid underbelly. The new revelations–as well as information, made public long ago but never picked up by the media–have further inflamed the average person, and made them look at themselves and the history of their family, and recognize the ways our system has wronged them, at who and what they’ve lost, and how their suffering has only added more money into the pockets of the elite.
The murder of Brian Thompson was wrong, that enough can go unsaid, but it was not a senseless killing. It was a man’s drastic reaction to an unjust system that has been allowed to prey on Americans for far too long.
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