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These are scary times to be a multi-millionaire insurance bigwig. The fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, the former CEO of UnitedHealthcare, has c-suites across the country quaking in their boots.
As 404 Media reports, with the killer still at larger, major health insurance companies are now taking down their leadership pages and scrubbing any information about their top brass.
Almost immediately after Thompson’s assassination, a link to UnitedHealthcare’s “about us” page was changed so that it no longer directs to a list of the company’s executives, 404 found.
Similarly, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield replaced links to its leadership page with a generic “about us” one with no specific information on its executives. This may be because of the ire it received for its plan, announced around the time of the shooting, to cut off anesthesia coverage for medical procedures that went longer than expected, prompting outrage and viral gallows humor that the assassin’s job wasn’t over yet. (Blue Cross Blue Shield now says it’s axing the proposed anesthesia plan in certain locations.)
404 notes several other health organizations that took similar action, including the nonprofit Caresource, which provides Medicaid and Medicare services; Elevance Health, a for-profit insurance provider part of the Blue Cross Blue Shield group; and Medica, a nonprofit health plan that mainly serves customers in the Midwest. Medica has also temporarily shutdown its headquarters in Minnesota.
Based on a company spokesperson’s remark, it’s no coincidence that major insurers are scrubbing public information.
“The safety of Medica employees is our top priority and we have increased security both for all of our employees,” the spokesperson told FOX 9. “Like other insurers, Medica also has removed from our website the bios of its executives, for the same precautionary reasons.”
Thompson was fatally shot by an unknown gunman on Wednesday. The assassin’s motivations remain unclear, but the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose” were reportedly written on the bullet casings recovered from the scene. This is likely a reference to the title of a 2010 book exposing the ruthless methods insurers use to deny healthcare.
Echoing that sentiment, the public reaction to Thompson’s death has been the opposite of sympathetic, with a wave of outrage at the terrible experiences commentators and their loved ones have had with the insurance industry taking over the discourse. Even doctors have been excoriating insurers in response to the news.
With all that in mind, maybe it’s not just the gunman at large that these executives are starting to fear.
More on healthcare: Murdered Insurance CEO Had Deployed an AI to Automatically Deny Benefits for Sick People