All The Rage
People, profits and the sorry spectacle of celebrating a man’s death
Two horrific things happened in this country last week. First, a 50-year-old healthcare executive and father of two was murdered in a targeted, predawn attack on a sidewalk in midtown Manhattan. Then, tens of thousands of people, maybe more, took to social media to make unspeakably cold-hearted jokes about it, or in some cases, even exult over it.
"Thoughts and deductibles to the family. Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network," wrote one person on TikTok.
“"He was CEO when he was shot," an X user tweeted, generating more than 120,000 likes. "Preexisting condition. Claim denied."
When United Healthcare posted on its Facebook page, mourning the death of its CEO, Brian Thompson, more than 41,000 people responded with smiling emojis before the company shut it down.
Clearly – and understandably – there is a tidal wave of rage at the state of our for-profit health-care system, and the private insurance companies that rake in profits like autumn leaves. Three years ago, when Thompson took over as CEO, United Healthcare’s profits were $12 billion. Now the profits are reportedly $16 billion, a nice little 33% growth curve. We can probably draw a reasonably straight line from there to Thompson’s compensation package, which, according to the Associated Press, amounted to $10.2 million.
At the close of business Friday, United Healthcare Group, Inc., UHC’s parent company, had a share price of $549.62. It has increased $269.43, or 96.16%, in the last five years. If you bought a single share of UHC stock 15 years ago this week, you would’ve paid $27.96. The share would be worth almost 20 times that now.
The nation’s largest private insurer with over 49 million customers, UHC, unquestionably, is highly skilled at making shareholders happy. It is less successful in making its paying customers happy. Insurance, after all, is a zero-sum game; the fewer dollars a company pays out in claims, the more it keeps for itself - and passes along to its investors. It is almost certainly not a coincidence that Brian Thompson’s final steps were taken en route to an annual shareholders meeting.
