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Alyson Shontell
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Editor-in-Chief
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Good morning,
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Six months ago, a top executive at the biggest health care company in America was shot dead. Brian Thompson, CEO of the $300 billion insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group (UHG), was murdered on his way to the company's investor day in New York City. |
At the time, UHG’s business had never been stronger. The health care giant also runs a prescription-drug benefit operation, employs thousands of doctors, and makes billions for running medical billing systems. Just a few weeks after Thompson was shot, the company announced that its revenue topped $400 billion in 2024—more than three times what it was 10 years ago. |
But the murder forced UHG to face a harsh fact: The health care system has never felt more broken for the patients it's meant to serve. The alleged killer is a young man who was angry that the company had soared in value even as it denied care to patients. On social media, disturbingly, many thousands of people celebrated the killing. But a far larger number of people clearly feel that UHG and other insurers use their size and power for profit, not for the greater good. |
Since then, UHG’s earnings and share price have plunged. This week, the company took a one-two punch: On Tuesday its CEO, Andrew Witty, stepped down, and the company pulled its earnings guidance; on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported
that the Department of Justice was investigating UHG for Medicare fraud. (The company said in a statement that it stood by the integrity of its Medicare work.) |
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Witty was succeeded by Stephen Hemsley, the former chief whose acquisitions made the company huge in the first place. Clearly, he’ll have a lot of work to do—including reckoning with the imperative of striking a better balance in UHG’s management of patient care. And it’s a reminder that any company can get in trouble when it puts profits too far ahead of humanity.
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