Summary
UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty criticized public outrage over the health insurance industry following the assassination of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson.
In a leaked video to staff, Witty dismissed criticism as “misinformation” and urged employees not to engage with media.
Thompson’s murder outside a Manhattan hotel has intensified scrutiny of the industry’s practices, with bullet casings found at the scene bearing phrases linked to insurance claim denial tactics.
The killing has sparked debate on UnitedHealthcare’s history of denying claims, while the shooter remains at large.
Witty faces unrelated DOJ insider trading allegations.
It’s not enough that these people steal from us and kill us, but they also insist we not criticize them while they do it.
They don’t see as anything more than a resource, a resource that complains when it is harvested is an annoyance.
we guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or unnecessary care.
If he is going to be that far up his own ass, I hope he is at least checking for polyps.
This is super tone deaf. If I were an executive, I’d be pretending I don’t exist.
Ikr, people in this position are expected to be malicious, they’re also generally expected to be the smart kind of sociopath.
This guy clearly has no idea of the situation he finds himself in
Has anyone checked on him? He sounds suicidal.
Yeah like he might jump out a window or something
Onto some bullet casings labeled:
- cloistered
- clueless
- cunt
Yeah I expected people like Jim to be hiding in a cave in the middle of nowhere like Bin Laden right about now
Who decides what is necessary? Ohhh… the beancounter AI full of errors, cool.
Witty, clearly reading from a script and dressed casually, defended his industry against accusations it refuses people vital coverage saying “we guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or unnecessary care.”
Doubling down on your lie ain’t gonna help you.
Unnecessary care
The doctor thinks its necessary. Claims handler and insurance company suddenly become medical professionals and give a second opinion of “its not necessary”.
Why even bother with the doctor? Just ask the insurance company instead.
Whats funny too - whenever the alternative is brought up (socialised healthcare), at least the conservative side of america starts seething over it, falling over themselves defending private insurance companies
Why even bother with the doctor? Just ask the insurance company instead.
100% this. If they know what’s best for us they should open a hospital.
Do the people making these refusals have medical degrees? Those people without medical degrees actually think they know better than a doctor?
“Necessary” is a really telling word there. Is it necessary that I have pain meds? No. It’s possible to go through my life in pain. It would fucking suck, but those pain meds aren’t strictly necessary. Just fuck anybody and any corporation who would want you to go through life in pain.
Same with teeth.
Sure, I can live without them but everything becomes harder and worse and there’s an awful period where you could probably die from the infections as many people used to.
But those are luxury bones covered by other, separate insurance, as though it is not related to my health.
And eyes. If eyes aren’t necessary they should prove it by gouging out their own.
100%. The majority of my health concerns at the moment are my teeth, and because dental is separate, I’m spending a lot more out of pocket because the maximum coverage is so much lower.
It’s also a fucking rip off. I supposedly have “good” insurance options and the premiums for a family of 3 are almost $1k a year, only cover up to $2k yearly of work, and requires 40 - 65% coinsurance depending on the type of work.
So if I spend less than $2k on dental work, I lose money buying dental. The max benefit I get is from $4k of dental, and any work beyond that just makes the situation even less attractive.
Every dental plan I’ve ever had (and they are considered good) was just my money pretax. No actual insurance. So, use it or lose it. I’ve already paid for it.
Part of it might be trying to guard against upselling.
We had two kids. One at a corporate hospital that specializes in pre- and post-natal care, and another at a non-profit independent hospital.
In retrospect, the first kid felt an awful lot like buying a car. Or getting married. Literally felt like they were trying to tack on all the things. “Oh you need to take first aid and CPR classes, they are covered by your insurance if you’re pregnant”. “Oh you should take this breastfeeding class”. “Have you seen our Alternative Birthing Center?”. “Babies looking a little big. Let’s schedule extra ultrasounds to track it”. Followed by scaring us into a planned c-section.
Kids first night he’s got a little wheeze. Head nurse during the day knew her shit, she said it was fine and noted it in the chart. Night nurse ain’t having that. Sent him right down to the NICU. Spent the night. Nothing wrong with him, he just didn’t really cry a lot so he never got to get all the fluid out of his lungs.
And then the bottle shaming after the fact. La leche League, et al…all a bunch of titnazis. But lactation counseling is covered by insurance. So…
Second kid, hospital looked and felt a lot more rundown, but the kid was even bigger, and they were less concerned about his size and even encouraged my wife when she said she wanted a VBAC. Staff was way more personal. Totally different experience.
I partway expect to start getting calls about my first kids extended warranty soon.
My sleep doctor has talked about going to appeal hearings for medicine with insurance companies, and talked about how they brought doctors, but not sleep doctors. So, when the arbitrator or whatever asked a question about sleep practices or medicine to the insurance doctor, they would defer the question to her because they didn’t know the answer.
Just being Devil’s Advocate here: Medicare fraud is a thing - docs who prescribe, or claim to have performed, unnecessary treatments, which may be as much as $60B (out of $900B spending, so…7-ish%). Maybe not enough to justify UHC’s 32% denial rate. And nobody seems to source their $60B or $100B fraud estimates - I can only find case evidence for a few hundred million, and those are cases spanning years.
Sounds like it would be easier to have a single government entity focused on fraud and Healthcare outcomes though.
The main arguement for private health insurance is that it will help better optimize how healthcare is distributed, but in a capatilistic society it seems unlikely we’d get anything other than means based optimization. However, Healthcare shouldn’t be optimized for financial status, but most likely should be optimized for optimal coverage.
That’s not a reason to deny claims for cancer treatment. If fraud is their worry, have a fraud team to investigate, don’t cut off coverage when your life saving operation runs an hour past the allotted time.
unnecessary care
Unnecessary for the company bottom line, yeah
Is the OTHER CEO of your company not an indication that you should probably stop your bitching?
Get the bankers out of my doctor’s office, the only people who should have the authority to decide what care is necessary is the physician treating me and myself when signing informed consent forums.
The fact that this is an internal video means at least one of your employees don’t think you’ve learned the lesson you need to learn from this mr witty.
I attended many C level meetings in a publicly traded company, grateful to be out by being fired after throwing the CTO off a cliff for sexual harrassment. Yeah, those whistleblower protection documents that I had to sign were used to wipe asses.
I can guarantee you that right now many meeting are having had where people need to come up with ideas to make the company look better without doing anything that would make them less money. They’ll come up with strategies where they promise to do better, probably implement a few rules that actually make it better for 6 months or so, then they’ll change it to make it worse than it is today. Potential disasters are always seen as opportunities to make even more money.
Fuck these people.
I’m now a CTO myself at a private company and we do better. We pay honest wages, also for C level (as in, I don’t have an insane salary or disturbing benefits), we try not to over hire, we try not to fire. I’m the first in, the last out every day. We focus NOT on lying to customers but on actually making good products, that is why people love working with us. There are companies that are working hard to do it right.
Y’all hiring?
How many CEOs does UnitedHealth have?
UnitedHealth Group (this guy) vs United HealthCare (subsidiary, the guy who was killed)
Arguably the group as a whole is worse because it also includes Optum among others.
Well I guess it’s time to continue to use your 2nd amendment rights
He’s The CEO of the company that owns United Health Care. Notice he’s ceo of United Health Group.
Used to be 1, then 0, now 1 again. Hopefully back to 0 again.
It’s different groups, the guy who got a bunny was unitedhealthcare. This guy is UnitedHealth … 😅
Its layered group of subcompanies.
if you don’t like the reflection, don’t blame the mirror.
Oh I like this one.
“There are very few people in the history of the US healthcare industry who had a bigger positive effect on American healthcare than Brian [Thompson].”
Lol you fucking shitting me? This guy’s whole speech is a lie.
Not so much a lie as speaking from a very twisted point of view. From his perspective, making more money is the only kind of positive change. As the CEO who oversaw the highest denial rate in the industry, Thompson’s leadership would of course be seen as positive by his fellow executives.
Not really, if you don’t view doctors, nurses, technicians, researchers, or any of the other people as “the industry”
The industry seems to be limited to health insurance, and not healthcare.
In a way it’s true. In death, he’s having a hand in changing the public perception of privatized healthcare in the US, and perhaps will help spark change altogether.
And suddenly the world is a lot closer to “Choom, I’ve got us a preem gig to flatline a corpo rat.”
Their only concern is their fealty to the bottom line. We are only the sheep to be shorn for it. Sheep aren’t supposed to fight back.
The only way anything is going to happen is if the sheep do precisely that. Become ungovernable.
That guy can smoke a turd in hell for all i care.
For a non-American, his “industry” is one of the few deterrents to those considering moving to the United States (with guns and MAGA cultists)
I wish I had an in somewhere else in the developed world.
Add our sociopathic work culture to the list.
As someone who worked with a lot of Americans, I came to believe that some of the sociopathic work culture was due, in part at least, to the tying of medical coverage to work itself.
I saw so many peers at the stage of burnout, having to jump from one job to another without so much as a break, because their healthcare and their family’s healthcare depended on it.
It struck me that in many cases many Americans were, at least in some sense, enslaved.
If I stop working and I break my leg playing out in the snow - there’s no risk to my financial future and so I can, if needed, rest (either to recover from said injury or to recover from the mental anguish of burnout or other.)
Many of my peers did not have that luxury.
I think that it goes a lot deeper than that. In the 90s I worked on a joint base shared with Americans and made a lot of American friends. They were shocked and sarcastic about the benefits that we had (Australians) that they did not have. Things such as long service leave (12 weeks paid leave after 10 years service) and even our four weeks annual leave. The shocked but I can understand, but the sarcasm I don’t get? It was as if our refusal to expend ourselves to the grind diminished us as a culture ?
That was 35 years ago, and our conditions have degraded accordingly. But I remember the American sentiment of the times well.
It’s definitely true, and it’s by design.
