Deny, Defend, Depose: UnitedHealthcare CEO’s Slaying Highlights Widespread Rage at Healthcare Industry

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

New York prosecutors have charged a suspect with murder for the killing of UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson. Police arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Monday, when a McDonald’s customer told an employee that she spotted him after that five-day nationwide search. The employee called the police, who came. They found Mangione with a black ghost gun, which can be assembled from parts and is untraceable, that’s similar to one used in the killing of Thompson.

While many offer condolences to Thompson’s loved ones, his killing sparked outrage over the state of healthcare in America. Some turned to social media to share their experiences with health insurance companies.

MILLENNIAL MIA: UnitedHealthcare denials of coverage. Interesting that one of the shell casings had the word “deny” written on it. And it made me think of the time they tried to deny coverage for my mother’s dialysis. Yes, you heard that correctly: UnitedHealthcare tried to deny coverage for dialysis.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. In Washington, D.C., Derrick Crowe is with the nonprofit People’s Action Institute, which has a Care Over Cost campaign, focused on the health insurance companies’, quote, “systemic practice of refusing to approve care through prior authorization denials or pay for care through claim denials.” And in Philadelphia, we’re joined by Wendell Potter, former executive for the health insurance companies Cigna and Humana. He’s the executive editor of HEALTH CARE un-covered. Wendell is the author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans and also the book Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Wendell, let’s begin with you. When you heard that the CEO of UnitedHealth was murdered on the streets of New York, that the assassin had written the words “deny,” “depose,” “defend” on the bullets, that there was this outpouring of anger about healthcare companies, while at the same time many, of course, expressed condolences to the family of Brian Thompson, your thoughts?

WENDELL POTTER: It was chilling but not shocking to me. I used to plan the kind of events that Brian Thompson was in New York for, the company’s investor day. And I want to stress that, because it’s significant that that’s why he was in New York, to attend probably the most important meeting in the company’s year, which is meeting with its top institutional investors and Wall Street financial analysts, who write reports that help determine the fate of these companies on Wall Street. That’s what these companies — that’s where they worship. They worship at the altar of Wall Street.

And I think what we’re seeing here is this young man, if this is the — the suspect who’s been arrested is the assailant, experienced some kind of delay, apparently, or some kind of interaction that did not go well with his insurance company and with the industry. This has been going on for a long time. This company in particular has a record of using prior authorization or refusing to pay for needed care far more than its competitors. But for-profit insurers, in general, have used this as a means of enriching their shareholders, of using fewer and fewer of our premium dollars to pay for the care that we need, so that more money can be made available to their shareholders.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask, Wendell Potter — there are about an average of 75 homicides per day in the United States. And I was stunned by the level of media attention and law enforcement resources utilized to track down this one killer of a wealthy businessman and health executive. I’m wondering your sense of where our system places its resources?

WENDELL POTTER: Yeah, it’s a very good point. So many resources were put on this, obviously, for one reason, because it became such a big media story, and the drama around this made it certainly a compelling story. But we’re talking about a person of privilege and great wealth who was killed, and that triggered this manhunt that we, I think — as you said, there are homicides every day in this country, sadly, but you don’t have this kind of reaction.

But I think part of what’s going on here, back to the rage that we’ve seen on social media, it’s just been just barely below the surface, and this triggered something. I’m equating this to kind of a dike bursting. I saw this rage, this outrage, if you will, toward this industry when I worked for it, and it was one of the reasons why I left. I couldn’t, in good conscience, continue to support an industry that used prior authorization, that established themselves between — firmly between a patient and his or her doctor. That’s what these companies have done.

And I think that what we’re seeing, sadly, in some form or fashion probably was inevitable, because more and more people are facing these denials of care or denials of claims, so people are winding up deep in debt. A hundred million Americans have medical — have medical debt, but most of those people have health insurance. But they can’t get their insurance companies to cover the care that they need. They had to spend so much money out of their own pockets before their coverage will even kick in.

So, it is a crisis that was brewing and, I think, has erupted. And I think the challenge is going to be: How do we — what do we make of this? How do we harness this rage? When I say “we,” I’m talking about advocates and those who know that the system needs a fundamental overhaul like we’ve never seen before. How do we harness this and channel it in constructive ways, to push reforms forward?

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to the healthcare point, but I also wanted to amplify the issue that Juan just raised. New York City Mayor Eric Adams was speaking during the news conference Monday about the arrest of Mangione, when he was asked about another case here in New York.

REPORTER: I wanted to ask you about the killing of a migrant teenager last week in the financial district. A group of men attacked him and another migrant, after reportedly asking him whether he spoke English or not. What updates do you have in that case? And do you have images of the suspects in that case? And if so, why haven’t those been publicized as we saw in this other case? And has the same amount of police resources been spent on his death as the CEO’s death?

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS: The — first and foremost, the fact pattern that you described about asking did he speak English, that was not in any of the reports. … Any loss is a huge loss.

AMY GOODMAN: That is Mayor Adams. And they were talking about the killing of the migrant, just a day after Yeremi Colino, who was 17 years old — a group came upon him and a friend, said, “Do you speak English?” When they said no, he was killed. The other was critically wounded. And this question of whether they handed — got video and photos of the gang, that moved on.

But we’re going to stick right now on the healthcare issue. Derrick Crowe is with us, of People’s Action Institute. Derrick, you’ve been collecting testimony. Your group was involved with a mass arrest. I want to turn to the Colorlines video report that features 29-year-old Carly Morton of Beaver, Pennsylvania, who was supported by People’s Action’s Care Over Cost campaign.

CARLY MORTON: I have been fighting my medical issues in my insurance company off and on for more than a year. I cried and screamed and requested supervisors. They made it impossible. I thought that that was the end of the road. I’m not getting the surgery, so there is not much of a chance for me. We reached out to People’s Action, and they gathered together around me and helped me fight my insurance company. And then, when that change happened, it was like all this hope just went inside of me.

AMY GOODMAN: Derrick Crowe of People’s Action Institute, you’ve been putting out videos like these. A whole group of people affiliated with People’s Action Institute were just recently arrested outside the offices of the Minneapolis headquarters of UnitedHealth. Explain.

DERRICK CROWE: Right. Well, first, let me say that we also offer our condolences to the family and friends of Brian Thompson. We obviously condemn any act of gun violence, no matter the motivation. We were shocked by that crime. We were not shocked by the outpouring of rage you mentioned.

And I just want to say, the thing that took us to that location and that led us to that action were stories just like Carly’s. These corporations have too much power in this country. They are blocking progress on issues like gun violence and on the epidemic of care denials in this country, either through prior authorizations or through claims denials. Just like Carly, 248 million care denials are issued by these companies every year, either through a prior authorization denial or a care denial. And people’s anxiety and stress and anger about that has just built up to a boiling point.

Carly’s case, she finally got paid her claim for that surgery only because she worked with us and gathered around with other people who organized in a strategic, nonviolent way to put pressure on these companies. Her condition is terribly painful. It’s called nMALS. Its pain when she eats is equivalent, her doctors say, to end-stage pancreatic cancer. And this corporation was refusing to give her the care that she needed, that she had been paying premiums for. And we had to literally take her pain to their front door to get their attention. Now, we were happy to do that. We want to do that for everybody that joins us at CareOverCost.org. But we can’t do that 248 million times a year. Something’s got to change.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Derrick Crowe, we only have about 30 seconds, but I wanted to ask you quickly. Medicare Advantage, which Brian Thompson ran for UnitedHealthcare, the privatization of Social Security — we’ve seen all these ads about open enrollment the past few weeks. What are you urging in terms of the government’s use of this privatization of Medicare?

DERRICK CROWE: Well, we must stop the government from turning over Medicare to companies like UnitedHealthcare through privatization schemes like Medicare Advantage. And we’ve also got to get policymakers to take the claims review process, the appeals process, out of the hands of corporations like this, and get our healthcare focused on people’s needs and not corporate profit.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll leave it there for now, but of course we’ll continue to cover this issue. We’re going to do a Part 2 with the two of you — we hope you can both stay — to talk about where you’re directing your efforts now as we move into the Trump administration part two. Derrick Crowe with People’s Action Institute, speaking to us from Washington, D.C., and Wendell Potter, former executive for the health insurance companies Cigna and Humana. He’s executive editor of HEALTH CARE un-covered and author of the books Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans and also the book Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks for joining us.