Image: Tdorante10
Then I signed on to my day job, and I found out that the CEO of UnitedHealthcare had been gunned down in New York City.
The rest of this post has a more raw tone than I usually take, and there are statements that readers might find upsetting. Consider yourselves warned.
To be fair, I’m quite a distance away from this whole situation as I’m neither a current nor a former employee of UnitedHealthcare. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for my colleagues who do work at UnitedHealthcare right now. None of us ever agreed to have targets painted on our backs. Working in health insurance should never mean a death sentence.
Being low on the totem pole is no guarantee of safety, anyway; the same was true of Ruby Freeman and her daughter. It’s been known for years that the public perception of insurance sales, as a field, is comparable to used-car sales and has been getting worse. Just in the past month I’ve seen several bits of anger- and hate-filled rhetoric floating around social media, including an accusation that “health insurers don’t even have a product.”
It’s scary. But it’s also infuriating, especially as I’ve been faced with the reactions to Mr. Thompson’s death by way of comments on the news stories and social media.
Let me be absolutely, positively, crystal clear about my position. If you think that this act was justified, even a little, you are a part of the problem with healthcare finance in this country, even if only passively and tacitly. If you celebrated it, your moral compass is skewed to the point of being backwardly aligned.
Strong words? Maybe.
But Mr. Thompson’s death has not brought back one single person who died during a disagreement with UnitedHealthcare (or any other insurer), nor will it. Not one single claim denial was overturned as a result of this act of cold-blooded murder, nor will any be. Gunning down a husband and father on an open street did not, and will not, bring about one single change in this industry.
What was the murderer trying to accomplish and does he understand that he failed?
When I spoke up in response to some posts on Bluesky, the general reaction was, “well, you you have to understand how many people have been hurt.”
No, I don’t.
I don’t need to understand why cold-blooded murder is supposedly justifiable or “understandable” simply because of the victim’s identity.
I don’t need to understand how anyone can believe they have the right to unilaterally act as judge, jury, and executioner.
I don’t need to understand why it’s all right for an entire industry to be attacked with inflammatory rhetoric that leads to violent acts.
Nor do I need to show empathy toward any of those who do. Violence has not, cannot, and will not do anything to solve the actual problems in our current healthcare delivery environment. Violence only begets more violence.
I’ll own those words; and I’m not going to mince them while calling a spade a spade. I have a clear conscience about my work. In addition, since I could be similarly targeted, I have the right to speak out. Nobody deserves to be personally threatened, shot at, or similarly terrorized.
Nobody.
And that includes Brian Thompson, his family, my colleagues, their families, my family, and me.
(For the record, I understand how painful it is to see someone die while fighting their health insurance company. I have a few stories of my own, and that doesn’t make me unique among health insurance professionals. At all.)