NEW YORK — The chief of UnitedHealth Group conceded that the patchwork U.S. well being system “does not work as well as it should” however stated Friday that the insurance coverage govt gunned down on a Manhattan sidewalk cared about clients and was working to make it higher.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was killed final week, was described as variety and sensible by UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty in a visitor essay printed in The New York Occasions.
The killing has been seen as a violent expression of widespread anger on the insurance coverage business. Witty stated individuals within the firm have been struggling to make sense of the killing, in addition to the vitriol and threats directed at colleagues.
Police have stated that the person charged with killing Thompson, Luigi Mangione, was discovered with a three-page letter by which he lamented the excessive price of well being care within the U.S. and singled out UnitedHealthcare for its income and measurement. The corporate, a division of UnitedHealth Group, is the biggest U.S. well being insurer. Mangione is at present being held in Pennsylvania and intends to plead not responsible to a homicide cost in New York, his lawyer has stated.
Witty stated he understood individuals’s frustration however described Thompson as a part of the answer.
Thompson by no means forgot rising up in his household’s farmhouse in Iowa and targeted on enhancing the experiences of customers.
“His dad spent more than 40 years unloading trucks at grain elevators. B.T., as we knew him, worked farm jobs as a kid and fished at a gravel pit with his brother. He never forgot where he came from, because it was the needs of people who live in places like Jewell, Iowa, that he considered first in finding ways to improve care,” Witty wrote.
Witty stated his firm shares some duty for lack of expertise of protection choices.
“We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people’s frustrations with it. No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did. It’s a patchwork built over decades,” Witty wrote. “Our mission is to help make it work better.”
He stated it was unfair that the corporate’s employees had been barraged with threats, at the same time as they grieved the lack of a colleague.
“No employees — be they the people who answer customer calls or nurses who visit patients in their homes — should have to fear for their and their loved ones’ safety,” he wrote.
A girl in Lakeland, Florida, was charged this week with threatening a employee at her personal medical insurance firm, Blue Cross Blue Protect, throughout a telephone name. Police stated she cited phrases Thompson’s killer wrote on shell casings and stated “you people are next” throughout the recorded name.
Police say the shooter waited exterior the resort, the place the well being insurer was holding its investor convention, early on the morning of Dec. 4. He approached Thompson from behind and shot him earlier than fleeing on a bicycle.
Mangione was arrested Monday after being noticed at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of New York Metropolis. He’s combating makes an attempt to extradite him to New York so he can face a homicide cost in Thompson’s killing.