Two months after the murder of the CEO of Unitedhealthcare, Brian Thompson, sent shock waves in the so -called American health insurance sector, the parent of the company, Unitedhealth Group, makes aggressive movements to protect his image.
Responding to a multitude of online attacks, often associated with the glorification of Luigi Mangione (who was accused of the murder of Thompson in front of a hotel in Midtown Manhattan in December, and who would have written a short manifesto calling health insurers “parasites ), The company hired a lawyer’s cabinet specializing in defamation cases. Clare Locke, practice based in Virginie, previously represented Dominion voting systems in a bombs defamation costume that saw Fox News pay a regulation of $ 787.5 million for having disseminated false allegations concerning the supposed role of Society in electoral fraud during the 2020 elections.
Unitedhealth seems eager to make a similar example of Elisabeth Potter, a plastic surgeon of Austin, Texas, and accuses the doctor “of using his social media to perpetuate inaccuracies, which is irresponsible, contrary to ethics and dangerous”. On January 7, Potter published a video on Instagram sharing its frustration with the American insurance system, explaining in a legend of the text only during a procedure: “I was interrupted by a call from United Healthcare – while the patient was already sleeping on the Table operation. They demanded information on his diagnosis and the justification of the hospital stay. I had to erase surgery at mid-surgery to call United, only to find that the online person did not even have access to the patient’s full medical information, although the procedure is already prior. »»
“It is beyond frustration and, frankly, unacceptable,” continued Potter. “We have to focus on care, not on bureaucracy.” The comments were plagued by Fury in Unitehealthcare and for profit health insurance more widely. “Luigi for the president,” wrote one person, while another has put these health insurance companies to be dead. “One day.”
Days later, according to reports BloombergPotter’s lawyer received a letter from Clare Locke asking him to modify the position, apologize and disavow the threats of violence that United has taken from the video. But Potter’s legal advisor, Jessica Underwood, said that there was nothing inaccurate in the video that must be corrected. “Dr. Potter will not be silenced by the attempts of Unitedhealthcare to threaten and harass it,” said Underwood. The company, on the other hand, argued that “Dr. Potter’s statements that she has been called by surgery is false. ”Potter’s Instagram video remains on the platform, where it received more than 350,000 likes.
Elsewhere, Unitedhealth has taken measures to prevent the dissemination of internal data on its refusal of customer complaints. (The plans of the individual UNITEDHEALTH Group are known to have one of the highest denial rates among all American insurers, a fact that received a lot of media attention following Thompson’s death.) As the lever reported, one day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January, United Helped a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission requesting approval to block a shareholders’ proposal that he uses a third -party verifier for Evaluate “complaints of refusal of previous customers, in particular when a death was involved, to determine if the letters of denial included incidentally incredible. and insensitive information. In cases where this external analyst determined that a complaint of coverage should not have been refused, the proposal indicates that the people and the members of the affected family must receive a letter of apology signed by hand by a Framework Unitedthian and a member of the Board of Directors of the Company of the Directors.
The justification of Unitedhealth to refuse a vote on such a policy, as his legal team wrote in the letter, is that the proposal was not submitted before “the applicable deadline”.
Then, on January 31, the insurer sent a second letter to the dry, seeking to prevent a vote by shareholders on another proposal linked to his refusal of complaint. This proposal, if adopted by investors, would recommend that unitedhealth “to assess how business practices have an impact on access to health care and results for patients, including frequency analyzes Previous requirements or coverage refusals lead to a delay or abandonment of medical treatment and serious adverse events and serious adverse events for patients. “The report produced by this review also aims to include” public health costs and macroeconomic risks created by business practices that limit or delay access to health care “.
In their letter, Unitehealth rejected the notion of putting this proposal from shareholders because it is “vague and indefinite” and, he argued, an attempt to “microestion in an imperceptible manner”.
The attempts of the police insurance giant on social networks chatting on its commercial practices and its openings to the dry of Trump concluded this week when the billionaire of the Bill Ackman hedge fund shared his opinion on the future of the company. “If I had still short-circuited actions, I would short-circuit United health care,” he published on Tuesday at X, adding that the dry “should carry out an in-depth investigation into the company”. He also thought about: “I would not be surprised to note that the profitability of the company is massively overestimated due to its refusal of medically necessary procedures and patient care.”
Ackman then deleted speculation, but United ahead reported his comments to the dry investigation. The company’s share price dropped the next day and ended the week about 2.7% lower than it was on Tuesday. “Health insurance has long been subject to significant regulatory monitoring and profits ceilings,” said Unitedhealth in a press release responding to the Franc investor, one of the many ultra-rich figures to support Trump in 2024 and Prolifically display social media on the way in the Maga, the movement, the movement could save the country. “All the affirmations that insurers-health, who generally have low-turn margins, can somehow exaggerate are largely informed about the structure and strong regulatory surveillance in the sector,” noted the company.
All in all, Unitedhealth is a much stronger defense of his reputation than two months ago, when the murder of Thompson triggered a flood of hostility that attracted him a little. Now, the company seems to be ready to cring it while the parallel and federal tests of Mangione are launching, with an animated rhetoric capable of vanishing once again.
