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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

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      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

    • 138 Shares189 Views

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      Ghost Gun Taken From Luigi Mangione Was Fully Homemade, Officials Say

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      The ghost gun that the authorities believe was used to kill UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson last week in Manhattan was an exceedingly rare variety.The police officers in Pennsylvania who on Monday arrested the man who has now been charged in the killing, Luigi Mangione, 26, said that he was found with a black pistol and a suppressor, often called a silencer. Both, the authorities said, had been fabricated with a 3-D printer, a device that sculpts a physical object from a digital model.Each year, authorities in the U.S. seize thousands of ghost guns, almost all of them originating from inexpensive kits bought online that can be assembled into a working weapon in as little as half an hour. But it is rare to recover a 3-D printed gun used in a crime, according to Tom Chittum, a former associate deputy director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.“If the gun used in the New York assassination really was 3-D printed, it would certainly be the highest-profile crime ever committed with one, and it would be one of a small number overall,” said Mr. Chittum, who now works for a public safety technology company.A 3-D printer can be used to create a gun frame, which is the only individual part of a firearm that federal law regulates, and then assemble a working firearm by equipping it with commercially made aftermarket components that are not regulated, including the slide, barrel, and trigger mechanism, Mr. Chittum said.The Pennsylvania authorities said Mr. Mangione’s pistol had a plastic handle, a metal slide and a threaded metal barrel.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

    • 150 Shares159 Views

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      A UnitedHealthcare and Mount Sinai Dispute May Force Thousands to Switch Doctors

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      As Mount Sinai Hospital and UnitedHealthcare haggle over pay rates, patients may have to pay out-of-network prices if they want to keep their doctors.Stalled contract negotiations between UnitedHealthcare, the health insurance giant, and Mount Sinai Health System, a leading New York City hospital system, are forcing tens of thousands of New Yorkers to switch doctors or risk paying out-of-network prices.The impasse has dragged on for months. Mount Sinai has sought to raise prices significantly, but the insurance company has refused to agree to pay the new proposed rates. As a result, Mount Sinai’s hospitals are now out of network for patients insured by UnitedHealthcare or Oxford, which are subsidiaries of the same company. But the issue is about to become even more urgent for many patients because many Mount Sinai affiliated doctors — in addition to the hospitals themselves — are about to be removed from UnitedHealthcare’s network, starting March 22. That means patients with United who have employer-sponsored or individual plans will be billed out-of-network rates when they see a Mount Sinai affiliated doctor at a doctor’s office.The negotiations have sent many patients scrambling to find new doctors. UnitedHealthcare says about 80,000 Mount Sinai patients are affected.What Happened?The dispute between the insurance giant and the hospital system is a rare instance in which health care contract negotiations have spilled into public view.Mount Sinai sought to negotiate better rates with UnitedHealthcare, demanding that the insurance giant pay the hospital more for doctor visits and hospital stays. United claims Mount Sinai was asking for rates to go up some 58 percent over the next four years.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