CNN: Killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO prompts flurry of stories on social media over denied insurance claims

[Dennis Donovan]

CNN - Killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO prompts flurry of stories on social media over denied insurance claims

By Tami Luhby and Clare Duffy, CNN

Updated 7:46 AM EST, Fri December 6, 2024



New York CNN — The early morning killing of a top health insurance executive in midtown Manhattan Wednesday has unleashed a flurry of rage and frustration from social media users over denials of their medical claims, a public display of Americans’ pent-up anger at the nation’s complex health insurance industry.

In one stark example, a Facebook post by UnitedHealth Group expressing sadness about UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s death received 62,000 reactions – 57,000 of them laughing emojis. UnitedHealth Group is the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, the division that Thompson ran.

/snip/

Social media backlash
Almost immediately after news broke that Thompson had been killed, social media users began posting about their frustrations with UnitedHealthcare and other insurance companies.

UnitedHealthcare “denied my surgery two days before it was scheduled. I was in the hospital finance office in tears (when I was supposed to be at the hospital doing pre-op stuff),” one user wrote in an X post that received more than 70,000 likes. “My mother was flying out to see me. My surgeon spent a day and a half pleading my case to United when she probably should have been taking care of her other patients,” she added, before saying the surgery ended up going ahead but calling the process “torture.”

“My breast cancer surgery was denied” by a different insurance company, another X user posted. “Breast cancer. She asked me ‘well, is it an emergency?’ I don’t know- it’s (f***ing) cancer. What do you think? I had to appeal and luckily it went through. Evil to do that to people,” she said.

/snip/

“This is care that people’s doctors recommend for them, and some of this care can be frightening,” Sara Collins, senior scholar at The Commonwealth Fund, a health policy foundation, told CNN, giving a cancer diagnosis as an example. “To get any kind of denial or delay while your insurer figures out whether or not they’re going to cover it is frightening for people. To have a decision all of a sudden be being made on the basis of financing is terribly upsetting for families.”

/snip

[LisaM]

1. I am not going to condone murder in the street, but...

maybe if CNN and other news outlets did more reporting on denial of care, it would spur some movement to reform the insurance industry and healthcare in general. Almost everyone I know wants a single payer model, but we can't seem to get there. Obviously insurance companies are a huge roadblock to this.

[tenderfoot]

4. Wishful thinking. Our news media's objective is to insure that the Status Quo stays put.

Hence their "both sides" coverage and simply reporting what people say... then stops there.

[TommyT139]

5. "Both sides" but barely

What percentage of the commercials are pharmaceutical companies?

Best not to piss them off.

[LisaM]

8. That is an excellent point.

While John Edwards dug his own political grave, one thing I distinctly remember his saying, right before he dropped out, was that pharmaceutical ads needed to be regulated. To this day I am not convinced that Rielle Hunter wasn't some kind of a plant. The timing with the remark about drug company ads and his leaving the race were extremely coincidental. (And no, not excusing John Edwards' foolish behavior. I still liked his message, but he needed to drop out since only Republicans are allowed to have extramarital affairs).

[speak easy]

11. "John Edwards' foolish behavior

"foolish?" I prefer some words that Elizabeth Edwards is reported to have used. A gross betrayal at the minimum.

[SidneyR]

16. I understand most European countries do not allow pharmaceutical ads.

Including the UK. It's not legal to go around the GP to sell pharmaceutical products.

[Evolve Dammit]

10. Which shows how much $ they have. Saturation ads 24/7

[Habitation]

2. Lady Macbeth: "where our desire is got without consent"

Malcolm: "and my more having would be as a sauce to make hunger more"

[Passages]

3. CBS Morning news talked about the fact so many people hate their

health insurance company but never spoke about the amount of money the insurance industry spends per year lobbying in DC.

I guess you could call that progress for corporate media, they otherwise would never talk about it at all.

Oct 28, 2022 -
Healthcare industry spending on federal lobbying surged 70% over 20 years
https://www.axios.com/2022/10/28/health-care-industry-spending-on-federal-lobbying-surged-70-over-20-years

[dalton99a]

6. Health insurance company executives belong to a special group of murderous parasites.

They have no empathy and deserve none

[Solly Mack]

7. The thing is the insurance industry will be appalled at the comments without acknowledging the anger and grief behind

those words of pain. And make no mistake, that is anger born from the pain over the actual lives harmed and lost because of industry practices.

They will look with disdain upon the people angry at them for - what they would describe as - simply doing their jobs.

Their job is to boost the bottom line. To protect the profits.

They'll publicly claim it is to deliver the most efficient care at the best possible price, but that's not the reality for those needing actual healthcare but are instead being denied life-saving treatments so a few extra dollars can be added to bonus checks and profit shares.

Your life being actuated down to the penny so someone else can make a profit.

If you're too poor to pay, then you're a product that doesn't sell in the land of free markets. Products that don't sell come off the shelf and into the dump bin they go - until you're simply written off and discarded.


America has the best healthcare in the world - or so the refrain goes.

And I guess that is something to be proud of - but what about the availability of that healthcare?

How proud of that should we be?


That man's death won't change anything. It won't. He's one man and his replacement is already on the job (or soon will be) assuring the shareholders that all is well.

I don't know the motive for his killing. I know what the evidence suggests but that's not knowing for certain.

But I do know for certain the anger, the hopelessness, the fear and the grief caused by the "best healthcare in the world" being an industry that places profits over people.

[Mblaze]

9. I have often asked my "conservative" friends and family..

Since we all know that a person requires healthcare insurance to afford any medical care at all, what would be more conservative than to have the largest possible insurance pool with the lowest possible overhead and no profit incentive that takes 15 - 25% off the top? Single-payer Medicare for all!

They have no good response except to agree with me.

[DFW]

12. I never would have contemplated such an act

My outfit ditched United Health Care decades ago, because they denied every claim. Enough was enough. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they were the inspiration for John Grisham’s “Great Benefit.”

[malaise]

13. Their silence for ads

Is finally cracking

[lostnfound]

17. Yeah, and if there'd been as much media attention as one hears complaints and horror stories..maybe we'd have single pay

Nah, that’s another thing we’re never gonna do.l
Cuz those stocks have been very profitable for decades.

[rubbersole]

14. Nightmares on Elm St.

Or any street. These vultures have been laughing (with their 'investors') at us since Nixon. The uprising begins.

[Aristus]

15. People are speaking up now that there's a solution to the problem.

Not the best solution, admittedly. But the only one so far that has yielded real-world results. Looking at you, Blue Cross/Blue Shield.