
UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty expressed sympathy with the general public’s frustrations over the state of the healthcare system in a Dec. 13 op-ed revealed in The New York Instances.
UnitedHealthcare, and the broader medical insurance business, have been the topic of public scrutiny and vitriol within the aftermath of the homicide of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Within the op-ed, the CEO of the nation’s largest healthcare firm addressed the backlash in opposition to the business for the primary time publicly.
“We all know the well being system doesn’t work in addition to it ought to, and we perceive folks’s frustrations with it,” Mr. Witty wrote.
Mr. Thompson had led UnitedHealthcare, UnitedHealth Group’s insurance coverage arm, since 2021. He was fatally shot Dec. 4 outdoors of the New York Hilton Midtown, the place UnitedHealth Group was internet hosting its annual investor day convention.
Within the days following the assault, people took to social media to share their experiences with delayed and denied care by UnitedHealthcare and different insurers. Some reacted with what the Instances described as “morbid glee” over Mr. Thompson’s dying.
Mr. Witty wrote that UnitedHealth Group, employers, governments and others who pay for care have to “enhance how we clarify what insurance coverage covers and the way selections are made.”
“Healthcare is each intensely private and really sophisticated, and the explanations behind protection selections will not be effectively understood. We share a number of the duty for that,” he wrote.
UnitedHealth Group’s goal is to “construct a healthcare system that works higher for everybody,” in line with Mr. Witty.
Different insurer CEOs have mentioned the anger directed on the business is comprehensible.
Sachin Jain, MD, CEO of SCAN Group, a nonprofit insurer, instructed The Wall Road Journal Dec. 10 {that a} “broader reckoning” with the insurance coverage business is happening after the assault.
“Most individuals who work in well being plans consider they’re supporting motion for sufferers, however it’s clearer than ever that the American public does not essentially see it that manner,” Dr. Jain mentioned.
Luigi Mangione, the alleged suspect in Mr. Thompson’s killing, was not insured by UnitedHealthcare, in line with NBC Information. Joseph Kenny, chief of detectives for the New York Metropolis Police Division, mentioned Mr. Mangione might have chosen to focus on UnitedHealthcare due to its dimension. UnitedHealth Group is the most important healthcare firm on the earth, and the fourth largest firm within the U.S., behind solely Walmart, Amazon and Apple.
Mr. Mangione wrote a manifesto condemning the healthcare business for placing earnings over affected person care, police mentioned.
Insurers have ramped up safety round their executives within the aftermath of the capturing. The New York Metropolis Police Division has warned different medical insurance executives that their security is also in danger.
UnitedHealth Group workers have been “barraged by threats” within the days because the assault, Mr. Witty wrote.
“No workers — be they the individuals who reply buyer calls or nurses who go to sufferers of their houses — ought to need to worry for his or her and their family members’ security.”
Mr. Thompson, 50, first joined Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth Group in 2004 and held quite a few management positions throughout the corporate. Earlier than UnitedHealth, he held administration roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Minnesota. He graduated with a bachelors of enterprise administration and accounting from the College of Iowa in 1997.
Mr. Thompson was “by no means content material with the established order,” Mr. Witty mentioned, and was devoted to bettering healthcare.
“The concepts he advocated had been geared toward making healthcare extra reasonably priced, extra clear, extra intuitive, extra compassionate — and extra human,” he wrote. “That is Brian’s legacy, one that we’ll carry ahead by persevering with our work to make the well being system work higher for everybody.”