UnitedHealth CEO: 'We understand people’s frustrations' with health care system
The head of UnitedHealthcare's parent company acknowledged Friday that America's health care system is flawed ‒ and he pledged his company would help fix it.
The promise comes several days after a man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson said he was motivated by hatred of that system ‒ a hatred apparently shared by many people who have taken to social media in the days since the Dec. 4 killing.
While UnitedHealthcare and its employees continue to grapple with grief over the loss of a "brilliant, kind man," Andrew Witty said in a New York Times op-ed, "...We also are struggling to make sense of this unconscionable act and the vitriol that has been directed at our colleagues who have been barraged by threats."
And yet, wrote Witty, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, "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," Witty wrote, adding that the current health care system in the U.S. is "a patchwork built over decades." United's mission, he added, was to make the system better, and Thompson, who was raised on his family's Iowa farm, was committed to that mission.
Thompson's legacy, Witty said, should be as someone whose ideas "were aimed at making health care more affordable, more transparent, more intuitive, more compassionate — and more human."
Thompson's shooting, allegedly by Luigi Mangione, who reportedly mentioned UnitedHealthcare in writings found in his possession when he was arrested, set off a barrage of angry posts directed at health insurers, gatekeepers of the country's $4.5 trillion health care system. People posted their stories about denials for coverage, delays in care and other negative interactions with health insurers. Many of those posts were directed at UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation's largest insurance companies.
"I've been hearing for years now from people who have been so frustrated because of denials or delays of care, and this was an opportunity for people to vent and to take out their anger against someone who just became known to them all of a sudden," Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive who became a whistleblower against the health insurance industry, told Paste BN recently.
That anger, Potter said, is "sadly misplaced."
"The system is rigged against Americans who need care, people who have health insurance, and it is largely because of the role that Wall Street plays in our health care system," he said.
Witty's op-ed, posted on the New York Times' website Friday morning, acknowledged that the factors that drive coverage decisions are not well understood by the public.
"Health care is both intensely personal and very complicated," he wrote. "We share some of the responsibility for that. Together with employers, governments and others who pay for care, we need to improve how we explain what insurance covers and how decisions are made."