The Hit

It’s not a long, hard reach to understand why me and so many others aren’t shocked or broken up about the assasination of an insurance company’s CEO. Especially not the CEO of United Healthcare, the so-called “insurance provider” that denies a third of all claims.

Since Covid began, UnitedHealthcare has been declining record numbers of claims and has been making record profits. It’s hard to cry (or give so much as a fuzzy goddamn) for someone who lives off blood money.

In yet another story about the damaging effects of faulty artificial intelligence, the largest health insurance company in the US, UnitedHealthcare, is being sued over claims it is using a flawed AI model. The system is said to have wrongfully denied health coverage to critical elderly patients and disagreed with doctors’ determinations.
~~~
The lawsuit alleges that the AI system has a 90% error rate and overruled the post-acute care opinions of physicians.
~~~
Another damning section of the suit claims that while only a few patients appealed coverage denials that were based on nH Predict estimates, over 90% of them were reversed through internal appeals processes or federal Administrative Law Judge proceedings.
~~~
Former NaviHealth employees told Stat that once UnitedHealth took over, the focus moved from helping patients to making money and keeping post-acute care times as short as possible. (source)

Go read the whole article at TechSpot—it’s fascinating and more than a little horrifying in a robots-take-over-the-world kind of a way.

While United Healthcare was busy adding insane financial distress to those of us not in possession of fab health, Brian Thompson (the dead suit) raked in an annual compensation package of $10.2 million. Gee, seems fair since, under Thompson’s watch, the company’s profit rose to over $16 billion smackers (up from $12 billion in 2021).  Of course, this was done at the expense of the sick and/or elderly people who paid steep monthly bills for the thrill of having their claims denied.

Wealth disparity and no access to healthcare is, understandably, enraging people. This is only gonna get worse.

I’m not going to mourn for a health insurance CEO who makes big-ass bucks while thousands die from lack of insurance or are thrown into poverty by healthcare expenses. Before the Affordable Care Act as many as 45,000 people died EVERY YEAR due to lack of coverage. The Tangerine Twat wants to murder the ACA and return us to that hellscape.

The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” were discovered by detectives on the shell casings found at the scene where Thompson was killed, police sources told ABC News late Wednesday evening.
~~~
Detectives believe the gunman is not a professional killer, sources said. (source)

So, was the shooter (a white guy, BTW) an outraged citizen who’s been paying his premiums only to have his claims denied due to a soulless corporation with a seriously flawed algorithm?

OR was this in some way about the DOJ insider trading investigation? Was the shooter a supremely pissed off stockholder?

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was one of several senior executives at the company under investigation by the Department of Justice when he was gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel on Wednesday.

Thompson — who was killed in what police called a targeted shooting outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown — exercised stock options and sold shares worth $15.1 million on Feb. 16, less than two weeks before news of the federal antitrust probe went public, according to a Crain’s New York Business report from April.

The stock price dropped sharply after the revelation that the DOJ was investigating whether the company had made acquisitions that consolidated its market position in violation of antitrust laws, a source familiar with the probe told the outlet. (source)

Thompson was CEO during one of the most horrifically greedy periods in the history of the company. Since Covid began they’ve been declining record numbers of claims and have been making record profits. It’s hard to cry for someone living off blood money

Oh, on top of all that, UnitedHealth claims one of their subsidiaries fell victim to a cyberattack by a Russia-based ransomware gang. They stole more than six terabytes of data, including "sensitive" medical records. Were Social Security numbers taken? I’ll bet they were. If UnitedHealth is your carrier, it’d be wise to ditch them if you can.

UnitedHealth did now (sic) reveal how much…it paid the hackers to have their systems restored. However, multiple media sources at the time, including Wired Magazine, reported that a ransom payment for the amount of $22 million was made to BlackCat in the form of bitcoin. (source)

Meanwhile, Blue Cross Blue Shield in Connecticut, New York and Missouri has announced it will no longer pay for anesthesia for the full length of some surgeries. If the procedure goes over a certain time, anesthesia will not be fully covered.

I’m guessing the BCBS CEO, Kim Keck, doesn’t follow the news.