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 have been following the news about Brian Thompson’s assassination in New York, and I am astounded by the flood of sympathy the media has poured out for him. Why? This man spent his entire career working tirelessly to deny healthcare to millions of Americans, all in the name of lining his own pockets and enriching shareholders. Yet the media praises him for his “kindness” and “generosity.” Let me be clear: pushing your company’s claim denial rate to nearly double that of your most cold-hearted competitors, bankrupting families through deceptive fine print and delay tactics, is not kindness, and it is not generosity. No, setting up boiler-room style offices with denial scoreboards is one of the most inhuman things I can imagine.
I spent nearly a decade writing software to help hospital systems fight insurance claim denials, and I can tell you, these insurers are getting better at it every year. They deny even the most justified claims, banking on the fact that most people won’t have the energy, resources, or will to fight back. And for the majority, they’re right. We had a team of a dozen nurses and PAs working alongside twice as many analysts. These were people who knew the system inside and out. We knew the deadlines, the bureaucratic jargon, the documentation required, and we tracked every claim meticulously. But even armed with all that knowledge and experience, we couldn’t win them all. On a good month, we might win two-thirds of the denials. That was considered a success.
What’s even worse is that for every claim we fought, there were countless others that never even made it that far, we only got denials on services that actually happened. A patient’s doctor tells them they need surgery, but an insurer like UnitedHealth says no and that’s it. The patient gives up and it is difficult to imagine they get better.
If you’ve ever had a serious medical condition—and I pray you haven’t—you know how much it drains you, how it strips you of your will to do anything. When every moment is agony, you don’t have the strength to sit on hold for hours, fill out endless forms, or chase down a bureaucratic system designed to wear you down. All you want is to sleep, because that’s the only place that pain can’t find you. How many people have simply lacked the strength to fight back, and ultimately succumbed to their conditions? How many families have been driven into poverty, their lives torn apart by a single emergency, all because of these executives’ policies?
We all know someone who has been through a health insurance nightmare and we also know that while political changes could probably help this problem the reality now is that these people are making a choice to run their companies this way, knowing full well the impact of their greed and indifference.
Where are your tears, your headlines, for the thousands of people and families whose lives have been destroyed and whose loved ones have died because of these same executives?
I spent 37.5 hours (I document EVERYTHING) on hold with Wellcare trying to get them to pay for Narcolepsy medication I’ve been on since 2021… “Has the patient tried this ADHD medication, as an alternate?” “No. I prescribed my patient the only FDA approved medication, in the United States that treats Narcolepsy and Cataplexy, and she needs to stay on it”. Luckily my doctor is wonderful.
It’s draining, but I’ve learned that the trick is to tell each of the outsourced customer service reps that you have no problem staying on hold for however long it takes. I’m disabled and have that ability. My partner works from home, so I do the same for their Blue Cross. When the insurance companies realize you’re willing to fill out ALL their paperwork, appeal higher and higher up, so that well-paid people get involved, clog their phone lines, and keep documenting every step of the way, they’ll give you what you want… but it is a full time job. 😮💨
I’m with you.
Never have I needed to work so hard to advocate for myself to get the care I needed as when I was with UHC.
By comparison, this year has held two major surgeries for me, neither expected, and my current insurer just shrugged, asked ONCE for proof of medical necessity, and paid the bill.
Also, let’s not forget the breach at a UHC subsidiary in recent months that brought down pharma payment systems for weeks…
Of course that’s a rhetorical question, but media has all been bought and paid for by corpos. The same corpos that now realize their lives can be easily deleted for all the evil shitty things they do, so of course all the corpo media is going to be unnecessarily biased to the positive for one of their own.
It’s accurate proof that the corpo media needs to be ignored in general if it hasn’t been obvious so far.
America needs real journalism, now more than ever. Sadly, it will probably be underground.
Who do you think owns the media? Who’s interests do they try to serve? It is not surprising at all that they would sympathize with him. We’re not talking some punk zine put out by some gritty journalist. These are highly consolidated corporate news outlets, many of whom have boards of directors that share some strong similarity to UHC. It’s profoundly unsurprising to me that they would sympathize with him, as they are a lot closer to a multi-million dollar CEO than your average Joe that gets their claims denied.
Insurance is irrelevant to the people that own and control much of our mass media, because they can easily pay out of pocket for any problems they have. All they see during this shooting is one of their own gunned down for “no reason”.
This reminds me of Grisham’s The Rainmaker