that the company applied pressure to see more patients and
diagnose them with additional conditions, presumably to increase the company’s profits. United has also faced lawsuits from patients and from the federal government regarding its aggressive business tactics. (United has refuted the claim that it relied solely on AI to deny care, and has said in response to
Stat’s reporting that it trusts its doctors to “make independent clinical decisions.”)
But the issue is the health-insurance system, not the CEOs. As long as the majority of health insurance in America is run as a private enterprise, it will work according to this logic. UnitedHealthcare’s aggressiveness is exactly the reason its parent company is now the largest health insurer in America. It has undeniably been successful in its primary business goal to deliver profits for its shareholders.
Compassion and capitalism can coexist, and this country has operated on the premise that the government’s job is to mediate between companies’ profit-making and citizens’ unassailable needs. Insuring people with high-cost conditions wouldn’t comport with thinking merely in terms of profit, which is why it took the Affordable Care Act to require companies such as UnitedHealthcare to insure people with preexisting conditions. The recourse that unsatisfied Americans are supposed to have is to either switch insurers or elect politicians who will reform the current system. The ugly reaction to Thompson’s death shows how many people clearly feel that neither of those options is serving the country’s true needs.
The identity and motivation of Thompson’s killer are still unknown. His death could have nothing to do with the U.S. health-care system. (Though shell casings reportedly found at the scene, and inscribed with the words deny, defend, and depose, seem to suggest otherwise.) Even if the killer targeted Thompson for a reason unrelated to his job, the act has laid bare that Americans are so angry about their health care, they would publicly celebrate a man’s death. Cheering on a vigilante may be cathartic for those who are fed up with the rot of America’s current health-care system, but it won’t fix a thing.
