The Case of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson
Rolling Stone weighed in on what those who check into Twitter or TikTok have probably already noticed: Social Media Has Little Sympathy for Murdered Health Insurance Exec. At this point, there is comparatively little new news about the killing of UnitedHealth’s Brian Thompson in Manhattan even though it’s over a full day since the event. Police are under great pressure to solve a high profile murder quickly. The perp apparently was in the vicinity before the shooting, it’s not yet clear how long, although some opine not very long. He shot Thompson twice, once in the calf and once in the torso. Gun mavens (we have a tweetstorm below) explain how the weapons choice and gun handling caught on film reveal him not to be a pro.
Frankly, I am surprised something like this has not happened sooner. It’s not hard to think of cases of the C-suite killing people for fun and profit. Ford Pintos. Opioid makers with addiction creating sales strategies, with Purdue Pharma the lead but far from only actor. Vioxx, where Merck gamed the clinical trial data to hide extra heart attack deaths, which were so frequent that when the drug was taken off the market, that US mortality rate declined. Monsanto (now Bayer), where the company would have its staff apply the Roundup weedkiller only in heavy-duty protective gear, but never issued similarly stern warnings to customers.
A close ally during the foreclosure crisis described some of his cases from his days as a class action and even individual tort lawyer on mesothelioma cases. The end state of the cancer is horrific, with the patients often having their ribs break as the cancer both fills up their chest cavity and greatly constricts their breathing capacity. In one, which I gather was not atypical, the defense attorneys kept deposing him, 10 hours a day, days on end, in his deathbed in the hospital. They were not just trying to catch him in an inconsistency. They were trying to kill him faster via the stress and reduction of sleep so he would not be able to testify in court.
He lived long enough to do so. The spectacle of him being wheeled in, with an oxygen tube and dressed to show his distended upper torso was so appalling to jury that it was not hard to establish that he had been desperately harmed, merely firming up how the defendant was responsible.
My contact had to stop doing these cases. It was too psychologically draining even though he would win big awards.
And then the defense bar got good at finding ways to escape meaningful punishment. For instance, Alabama had once been a good venue for this sort of case (forgive me for sparing you why). But the state Supreme Court is elected. Those races soon attracted more in campaign donations than any judicial contest in the US. At one point, the chief justice race got $13 million in donations, far more than the governor’s race.
The result was any large damage award in Alabama would be cut back on appeals to $1 million, as in couch lint for a big company.
by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism | Read more:
Image: Stefan Jeremiah/Associated Press[ed. See also: Insurer Reverses Policy That Would Have Limited Anesthesia Periods; and, Torrent of Anger for Health Insurance Industry Follows C.E.O.’s Killing (NYT):]
“Thoughts and deductibles to the family,” read one comment underneath a video of the shooting posted online by CNN. “Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network.”
"The business run by Thompson brought in $281 billion in revenue last year, making it the largest subsidiary of the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group. His $10.2 million annual pay package, including salary, bonus and stock options awards, made him one of the company’s highest-paid executives."
