Summary
Reddit’s r/medicine moderators deleted a thread where doctors and users harshly criticized murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Comments, including satirical rejections of insurance claims for gunshot wounds, targeted UHC’s reputation for denying care to boost profits.
Despite the removal, similar discussions continue, with medical professionals condemning UHC’s business practices under Thompson’s leadership, which a Senate report recently criticized for denying post-acute care.
Thompson, shot in what appears to be a targeted attack, led a company notorious for its high claim denial rates, fueling ongoing debates about corporate ethics in healthcare.
I agree, but seeing someone committing that crime for personal retribution and/or as a symbolic gesture in this literally crippling, nightmarish private health insurance hell, all I can muster is, “This is perfectly normal in this moment.” This rant isn’t specifically directed at you, but just to elaborate:
He probably is a very nice person when you talk to him, and he is probably a caring husband and father. He probably has complex ways of resolving the cognitive dissonance between who he felt he was and what UHC is doing. But it’s hard to deny he was in a position with decision-making power to make millions of lives substantially better or worse, to enable or disable the worst excesses of private insurance, and the buck stops there if anywhere. This chart has made the rounds including on Lemmy, showing a 32% denial rate for claims, which is astounding.
Frankly, we all have had so many moments with health insurance where we’re basically told they cannot help us, given arcane and pretextual reasons, and given a silent ultimatum of “you want us to honor our agreement? Make us.” Then we waste so many unpaid hours of our dwindling or nonexistent free time creating paperwork pointing out the obvious injustice, and eventually they may honor a claim without admitting fault or changing their practice. Mostly they probably just ignore us and we go away, or respond with the same Kafka-esque administrative slop until we can’t eat any more. It was built that way, and who but the CEO is responsible?
This is not a situation entirely created by him, but most of us are collectively cooking on a stove and none of us have access to the controls. He did, and he turned up the temperature. Not at all surprising, and it’s very hard to have sympathy for him. I have plenty of sympathy for his kids.