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      Anger After UnitedHealthcare CEO’s Killing Rattles Health Insurance Workers

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      Employees at UnitedHealthcare and other companies described being anxious after an outpouring of online vitriol.The fatal shooting last week of an executive on the streets of New York City plunged his family members and colleagues into grief. For rank-and-file employees across the health insurance industry, the killing has left them with an additional emotion: fear, with many frightened for their own safety and feeling under attack for their work.Health insurance companies have increased security measures since the killing of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, and as an outpouring of online rage toward the industry has followed. Health care leaders have spoken with frustration about feeling vilified, and in the Minneapolis suburbs where United is headquartered, police officers stepped up protection of the company’s offices.“Clearly the employees have been shaken,” said Mayor Brad Wiersum of Minnetonka, who said the city was working “just to provide that reassurance and that security, to let people know that we are going to do everything we can to keep them safe.”One UnitedHealthcare worker who processes claims described being cleareyed about the American health care system’s shortcomings, but also believes that she and her colleagues did their best to help patients within the limits of that system. Like most workers interviewed, she did not want to be named because, given the reaction after Mr. Thompson’s killing, she feared for her own safety.The reaction by some others to the killing, the employee said, had been startling and horrifying. The worker, who has been at the company for many years, described being told in recent days by an acquaintance that as an employee of UnitedHealthcare she was responsible for millions of people being denied lifesaving care, and that if she had any ethics, she would see the killing as the impetus to quit her job.“Lots of us were feeling like we were horrible because we’re being accused of working for the evil empire,” the employee said. “But we all do the best we can to do a good job in the system we are in.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s Funeral Held Privately in Minnesota 

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      Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare who was gunned down in a brazen killing in New York, was laid to rest this week at a private funeral service in his Minnesota hometown.On Monday, while the nation was transfixed by the arrest of a 26-year-old man from Maryland who was charged with the murder, family and friends of the slain executive gathered at a Lutheran church in Maple Grove, Minn., to mourn the loss of a husband and father who ascended from modest roots in Iowa to one of the most powerful roles in the health care industry.In the days since Mr. Thompson’s death, there has been an outpouring of anger at the insurance industry for denying medical claims, with some people even seeming to cheer his killing online. The vitriol has stunned those who were closest to Mr. Thompson, leaving many of them to grieve his death in private ways.“Brian was an incredibly loving husband, son, brother and friend,” Mr. Thompson’s family said in a statement. “Most importantly, Brian was a devoted father to our two sons, and we will miss him for the rest of our lives. We appreciate the overwhelming outpouring of kind words and support we have received.”Mr. Thompson, 50, grew up in a working-class family in Jewell, Iowa. His mother was a beautician, according to family friends, and his father worked at a facility to store grain, according to an obituary of his father.He spent his childhood summers “walking beans” on farms, going row by row through the fields to kill weeds with a knife, or working manual labor at turkey and hog farms, according to two friends.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Reaction to C.E.O. Killing Exposes Frustrations With Health System

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      The killing of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson has mesmerized a deeply polarized nation that shares a collective frustration over dealings with health insurance companies.On social media, some people have cheered for the gunman and expressed little remorse over the death of Mr. Thompson, 50, a father of two boys from Maple Grove, Minn., with some painting him as the villain in a national health care crisis.And now that the identity of the suspect, Luigi Mangione, 26, has been revealed and more photos of him have emerged, he is being defended or even applauded in some circles. That adulation reflects public anger over health care, said Nsikan Akpan, managing editor for Think Global Health, a publication that explores health issues at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The UHC killing and the social media response stem from people feeling helpless over health coverage and income inequality,” he said. The topic is so often ignored by American public officials, he said, that voters have stopped listing it as a top priority.“A targeted killing won’t solve those problems, and neither will condoning it,” he added.Experts who reviewed the flood of social media posts expressing support for Mr. Mangione said that while it can be difficult to assess the provenance of posts, none have the telltale signs of an “influence campaign” by a foreign entity.“People are legitimately actually pissed off at the health care industry, and there is some kind of support for vigilante justice,” said Tim Weninger, a computer science professor at Notre Dame and expert in social media and artificial intelligence. “It’s organic.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      They Barter and Trade in Rural America. How Will They Vote?

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      Many rural Americans engage in cashless barter systems to get food and firewood for heating and cooking. They value self-sufficiency, making them wary of government intervention.When Miki Shiverick needs firewood to heat her home, or help clearing the rusted appliances and vehicles from her property, she doesn’t go to a store or pay for services. Instead, she trades for it.For instance, preparing her land in Bergholz, Ohio for livestock over the last four years required hauling away piles of salvage, old tools and antiques from the rundown property she bought from the family of an old tinker. The place, with its barn house and five outbuildings, resembled a 12-acre junkyard.Ms. Shiverick, 56, found local scrappers willing to keep the profits from selling the rusted cars, campers, tractor parts, buried gas tanks and aluminum ingots at the local scrap yard. She also found woodsmen willing to clear trees for her in exchange for most of the wood.On this newly blank canvas, she dreams of creating a clean, natural retreat for her family with gardens that support wildlife and livestock, which she raises to promote food self-sufficiency and land stewardship.Bergholz is a rural town with a population of fewer than 600. For centuries, rural communities like Bergholz have operated in cashless barter systems built on mutual trust and neighborly relationships — a culture of self-sufficiency that has also shaped political views toward a kind of bootstrap conservatism.“People around here don’t do welfare, it’s not who we are,” Ms. Shiverick said.Ms. Shiverick bartered a bolt of linen with an Amish neighbor for a chicken coop.Rebecca Kiger for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      CVS Ousts Karen Lynch as C.E.O. and Shares Fall

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      Shares of the health care conglomerate dropped after the sudden departure of Karen Lynch and a downbeat update on the state of the company’s finances.CVS Health abruptly ousted its chief executive, Karen S. Lynch, on Friday as the pharmacy and health care conglomerate struggled with sluggish growth and faced pressure from investors.The company appointed David Joyner, the head of CVS Caremark, its successful unit overseeing prescription drug benefits, as the new chief. The management change was accompanied by a dour financial update, with the company scrapping its previous forecasts because of “elevated medical cost pressures.” Shares of CVS fell sharply in early trading.The company’s earnings have disappointed investors in recent quarters, in part because of rising costs at Aetna, the company’s insurance arm. Activist investors have pushed the company for changes, prompting CVS to explore breaking itself up, potentially by separating its pharmacy business from its insurance unit.CVS employs about 300,000 people. Its sprawling portfolio includes the branded pharmacy chain, with more than 9,000 retail locations; Aetna, which it acquired in 2018, which has nearly 40 million policyholders and other customers; Caremark, the country’s largest pharmacy benefit manager, hired by employers and governments to oversee prescription drug benefits; and Oak Street Health, which runs more than 200 primary care centers for Medicare recipients.Ms. Lynch took over as the group’s chief executive in February 2021, after running Aetna. “I don’t want people to think about CVS Health as just that drugstore,” she told The New York Times in 2022. “I want them to think about it being a health care company.”Roger Farah, the chairman of CVS Health, said in a statement on Friday that “the board believes this is the right time to make a change.” He added that Mr. Joyner’s “deep understanding of our integrated business” would help steer the company through its challenges.During his tenure at Caremark, which he rejoined in 2023 after a few years away from the company, Mr. Joyner faced increased scrutiny of pharmacy benefit managers. He appeared at a Congressional hearing this summer, facing questions from lawmakers about the role of pharmacy benefit managers in rising drug costs for millions of Americans.This month, CVS said it would cut almost 3,000 jobs, mostly corporate employees. Its rival chains are also under pressure to cut costs: This week, Walgreens said it would close about 1,200 stores over the next three years.Shares of CVS, which dropped 7 percent on Friday, have fallen more than 25 percent this year. More

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      Held Involuntarily in a Psychiatric Hospital

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      More from our inbox:The Debate Over Taxing TipsNonpartisan ElectionsSitting Still in SchoolAcadia Healthcare’s Park Royal hospital in Fort Myers, Fla., and Florida is among those that wrongly held some patients against their will.Michael Adno for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Patients Held Against Will by Hospitals” (front page, Sept. 2):Thank you for your hard-hitting exposé of Acadia Healthcare, a chain of psychiatric hospitals, which revealed Acadia’s corrupt financial practices. The authors report on the toxic effects — including but not limited to driving people away from treatment — of these unscrupulous procedures.But even when hospitals have pure motives, inpatient psychiatric care — especially when it is involuntary — can be traumatizing, and may lead to an increased risk of suicide: In one meta-analysis, “the postdischarge suicide rate was approximately 100 times the global suicide rate during the first 3 months after discharge.”The key to helping people is funding community-based, evidence-based programs. For example, “Peer-run respites provide a voluntary alternative to an emergency department visit or inpatient hospitalization for people experiencing a psychiatric crisis,” as was noted in a recent article in Psychiatry Online.With so much evidence to support the benefits of community-based mental health care, I believe that a paradigm shift in the mental health system — away from hospitalization and toward community-based treatment, including peer support — is long overdue.Susan RogersCherry Hill, N.J.The writer is the director of the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse.To the Editor:The motivation for this atrocious behavior is cited in the first paragraph of the article, where it is noted that Acadia Healthcare’s stock price has more than doubled. This is an example of the perverse results of the use of private equity to finance health care. There are other such examples.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elizabeth Warren: Don’t Be Fooled. Donald Trump Has a Plan.

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      During the presidential debate on Tuesday, Donald Trump was pressed on the details of his plan to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “better.” The question should’ve been a softball. After all, Mr. Trump has been promising the American people a plan for nine years, so he’s had time to prepare. His answer? After ducking and weaving, he came up with: “I have concepts of a plan.” Uh, that’s not a plan.Plans translate values into action. They test the quality of the ideas and the seriousness of the people advancing them. Plans reveal for whom candidates will fight and how effective they are likely to be. And in a presidential race, if either party’s nominee is asked about his or her plans for something as fundamental as health care, voters should get a straight answer.The problem is not that Mr. Trump can’t think up a way to put his values into action. The problem is that when he and other Republican leaders produce plans with actual details, they horrify the American people.Mr. Trump’s health care values have been on full display for years. In 2017, Republicans controlled Congress, and their first major legislative undertaking was a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Every time they drafted something, independent experts would point out that their plan would toss tens of millions of people off their health insurance, jack up premium costs and slash benefits for those with ongoing health problems.After months of wrangling, Mr. Trump and Republican lawmakers voted a bill through the House to repeal the A.C.A. That night, Mr. Trump hosted a party at the White House to celebrate their big step toward taking away health care from millions of people.A.C.A. repeal then moved to the Senate. Republicans had the majority, so if they all stuck with Mr. Trump, the A.C.A. would die. As senators gathered to vote, nearly all of the Democrats — including Kamala Harris, then a senator from California — remained standing, too anxious even to sit down. We murmured stories about who would be affected by this vote: the uncle who had cancer and would lose coverage, the kid diagnosed with a heart anomaly whose parents wouldn’t be able to find new insurance, the college students who would just go without coverage and hope they didn’t fall on ice or get in a car accident. We felt the weight of people’s lives on the line.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More