Major health insurers are deleting images of their top leadership from corporate websites or removing executive pages entirely following the brazen killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson earlier this week.
Thompson, 50, was shot multiple times in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday in what appeared to be a targeted attack. Though many of Thompson’s peers expressed grief, the killing set off a morbidly gleeful celebration on social media, where posters on sites like X and Reddit applauded and joked about the crime to vent frustration and anger with health insurers.
The shooting and subsequent reaction has spurred healthcare companies to increase security around their executives, according to reports. Such measures appear to be extending online, as major insurers scrub identifying details of top personnel from their sites.
UnitedHealthcare’s parent company UnitedHealth quickly removed its executive leadership page after Thompson’s death. Some of its peers have since followed suit: Elevance’s senior leadership page is no longer online.
Executive pages for a number of Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, including in North Carolina and Massachusetts, have also been deleted, while the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, an association of independent Blues plans, removed a link to its executive bios from its “About Us” page.
Blues-branded plans operated by Anthem were embroiled in the social media firestorm stoked by Thompson’s death this week, as commenters slammed an upcoming coverage policy to curtail anesthesia coverage for certain surgeries. Some posts threatened Blues executives unrelated to the change.
Elevance, Anthem’s parent company, canceled the policy rollout on Thursday, citing “significant widespread misinformation.”
Centene and CVS, which owns Aetna, have left executive biographies intact but removed headshots of their officers. Corporate governance pages for Cigna, Humana and Molina remained unchanged as of press time.
CVS confirmed that the executive images had been removed, but a spokesperson declined to comment as to why. Elevance and Centene did not respond to a request for comment.
However, Centene cited Thompson’s death in moving its investor day next week — originally scheduled to be an in-person conference in New York City — to a virtual-only event.
“In the wake of the tragic loss of UnitedHealthare’s CEO Brian Thompson, Centene’s Investor Day will now be hosted virtually,” the Thursday press release says.
Police are still searching for Thompson’s assailant as of Friday morning. Though the shooter’s motivations remain unclear, evidence suggests that the killing may be tied to resentment against UnitedHealthcare or the health insurance industry at large.
Thompson’s widow, Paulette, told NBC News that her husband had received threats related to a lack of coverage. Words like “deny” and “depose” were found on round and shell casings at the scene, according to multiple outlets, which could be related to a phrase used to critique health insurers for avoiding covering medical care.
Insurers do not publicly disclose their denial rates. However, UnitedHealthcare — by some metrics the largest private insurer in the U.S. — has come under scrutiny for its high rates of claims denials in recent years.
On social media over the past few days, many posters have published screenshots of a proprietary analysis by personal finance website ValuePenguin finding that UnitedHealthcare denied 32% of claims in 2023 — twice the industry average. (According to ValuePenguin’s website, an unnamed insurer disputed the denial rate on Thursday, one day after Thompson was shot.)
Similarly, a Senate subcommittee investigation earlier this fall found UnitedHealthcare’s denial rate for post-acute services in privatized Medicare Advantage plans increased from 8.7% in 2019 to 22.7% in 2022.
Over the same time period, UnitedHealthcare’s skilled nursing home denial rate increased ninefold.
Thompson’s colleagues and peers in the industry this week remembered the executive as a kind and honest man. Many denounced violence against executives in healthcare, a sector that already struggles with an elevated risk of interpersonal harm.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
Courtesy of UnitedHealth
“The people in our industry are mission-driven professionals working to make coverage and care as affordable as possible and to help people navigate the complex medical system,” Michael Tuffin, the president and CEO of powerful health insurance lobby AHIP, wrote on LinkedIn on Thursday. “We condemn any suggestion that threats against our colleagues — or anyone else in our country — are ever acceptable.”
Thompson, who is survived by his wife and two sons, had been with Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare for two decades, and served as CEO since 2021. The payer provides medical insurance to 50.7 million Americans and has brought in $224 billion in revenue year to date.
In an updated statement published Thursday night, UnitedHealth said its current priorities are supporting Thompson’s family, assisting law enforcement in the investigation and ensuring the safety of its employees.
“While our hearts are broken, we have been touched by the huge outpouring of kindness and support in the hours since this horrific crime took place,” the statement reads. “So many patients, consumers, health care professionals, associations, government officials and other caring people have taken time out of their day to reach out. We are thankful, even as we grieve.”
UnitedHealth has restricted comments on a separate statement on Facebook expressing shock and sadness at Thompson’s death.
Roughly 75,000 people have commented a laughing emoji on the post.
