UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson (50) shot in a targeted attack in NYC

[raisedbywolves]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ma...bc1c915a&ei=18

The CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one of the largest insurance providers in the nation, was fatally shot Wednesday morning outside the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan in what police said was a "brazen targeted attack."

Brian Thompson, 50, was shot by a masked gunman at approximately 6:45 a.m. near the hotel on 54th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, the New York City Police Department said.

When police arrived at the scene they found Thompson unconscious and unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the leg and chest. Emergency medical responders rushed the man to Mount Sinai West, where he was pronounced dead.

[Bewitchingstorm]

Well, that is scary. I wonder if it was personal or if the shooter targeted him because of a claim/past things with United.

[raisedbywolves]

I'm going to go with the 2nd option, and I expect stuff like this to start happening more and more.

3rd option, but still not the correct one IMO, is a disgruntled employee mad at the company in general.

[Bewitchingstorm]

Unfortunately, I agree. I once worked for an insurance company and they were brutal when it came to paying for very much needed health care procedures and wanted us to essentially deny everything. Clearly I didn't last long in that environment.

[raisedbywolves]

I've worked on the other side of the coin in a few jobs, seeing the billing and reimbursement on insurance claims and I quickly realized why people hate insurance companies. They will do anything to deny a claim!

[Bewitchingstorm]

They really will, and it is sickening. I wish there was more control over them, but we both know lobbyists and money run the country.

[Bewitchingstorm]

The wife of slain health insurance CEO Brian Thompson said Wednesday that her husband had been getting threats before he was gunned down in Midtown Manhattan.

“There had been some threats,” Paulette Thompson told NBC News in her first comments since her husband was murdered early Wednesday.

“Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage?” she said. “I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him,” she told NBC News by phone.

“I can’t really give a thoughtful response right now. I just found this out and I’m trying to console my children,” she said, confirming that police had told her it is believed to have been a “targeted attack.”

https://nypost.com/2024/12/04/us-new...0fsJb8dwEIpJ5g

[raisedbywolves]

Sorry, but I laughed.

[raisedbywolves]

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/...-stop-monopoly

Multiple senior executives at UnitedHealthcare have been under investigation by the Department of Justice, though it is not clear if CEO Brian Thompson was part of that investigation before his murder.

Thompson was gunned down in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday morning in what police are calling a targeted attack.

There were reports that the executives were accused of insider trading and fraud, and last year the DOJ launched a probe into whether the nation’s largest insurer was unfairly restricting competitors and running a monopoly.

Last month, the DOJ along with attorneys generals from Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey and New York filed a lawsuit to block UnitedHealth Group Incorporated’s proposed $3.3 billion acquisition of rival home health and hospice provider Amedisys Inc.

https://nypost.com/2024/12/04/us-new...rading-report/

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was one of several senior executives at the company under investigation by the Department of Justice when he was gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel on Wednesday.

Thompson — who was killed in what police called a targeted shooting outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown — exercised stock options and sold shares worth $15.1 million on Feb. 16, less than two weeks before news of the federal antitrust probe went public, according to a Crain’s New York Business report from April.

The stock price dropped sharply after the revelation that the DOJ was investigating whether the company had made acquisitions that consolidated its market position in violation of antitrust laws, a source familiar with the probe told the outlet.

https://nypost.com/2024/12/05/us-new...urder-sources/

The at-large suspect who gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Midtown hotel may have left a message on the bullets he used to kill the executive Wednesday morning, according to police sources.

The NYPD is investigating the possible message — which appears to include the words “deny,” “depose” and “defend” — engraved on live rounds and shell casings left behind by the masked assassin after he shot Thompson, 50, several times at about 6:46 a.m. before fleeing, the sources said.

The words are strikingly similar to a 2010 book condemning the insurance business, in which Thompson is one of the most powerful leaders.
Surveillance footage outside the Midtown Hilton Hotel shows a person of interest and the suspected shooter in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

“Delay, Deny, Defend” — two of the three words seemingly left — is sub-titled: “Why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it.”

Cops had recovered three live 9-millimeter rounds and three discharged casings in front of the Hilton hotel on Sixth Avenue, where Thompson, of Minnesota, was set to host an investors’ conference that morning, police officials said.

Sources said several of the pieces of evidence each contained one word, indicating the killer may have been trying to leave a message as investigators try to piece together a motive.

[Bewitchingstorm]

Something is really off on this one. I honestly would not be surprised if it was personal, not specifically related to his role at United.

[Nic B]

The wife could've been behind it, and the whole insurance stuff is to throw the police off.

Probably not, but my mind went there.

[Bewitchingstorm]

Mine too, Nic.

[Angiebla]

Thats the first think I thought Nic, a hired hitman.

And she thought they would be thrown off her scent because of his job and how many people disliked him.

[Nic B]

Yep, and the claim he was getting threats came from her. This reminds me of that dude that killed his whole family and said he had been receiving threats, and it turned out he was emailing himself the threats.

[raisedbywolves]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/murdered-...175638581.html

Just over a year before United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered this week in Midtown Manhattan, a lawsuit filed against the insurance giant he helmed revealed just how draconian its claims-denying process had become.

Last November, the estates of two former UHC patients filed suit in Minnesota alleging that the insurer used an AI algorithm to deny and override claims to elderly patients that had been approved by their doctors.

The algorithm in question, known as nH Predict, allegedly had a 90 percent error rate — and according to the families of the two deceased men who filed the suit, UHC knew it.

As that lawsuit made its way through the courts, anger regarding the massive insurer's predilection towards denying claims has only grown, and speculation about the assassin's motives suggests that he may have been among those upset with UHC's coverage.

Though we don't yet know the identity of the person who shot Thompson nor his reasoning, reports claim that he wrote the words "deny," "defend," and "depose" on the shell casing of the bullets used to shoot the CEO — a message that makes it sound a lot like the killer was aggrieved against the insurance industry's aggressive denials of coverage to sick patients.

And the alarming cruelty of the claims around the company's AI algorithm — we asked the company whether it's still using it, but received no immediate reply — perfectly illustrates why they're so angry.

[Angiebla]

So basically this guy sucked. And it doesnt seem like the world will miss him

[Bewitchingstorm]

He did suck. He and other CEOs of insurance companies are in it for the money. They have a culture of denials...anything to not pay for much needed healthcare services...all the while, lining their pockets.

[Bewitchingstorm]

Yolonda Wilson is one of many people who shared painful stories about health insurance gone wrong on social media this week.

Her insurer, UnitedHealthcare, denied coverage for a surgery about two days before it was scheduled, back in January. She finally got it approved, in the nick of time, with a lot of unnecessary stress and tears.

The shocking, targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson Wednesday struck a nerve on social media, triggering an outpouring of negative experiences with the tangled health care system in the U.S.

Many people shared searing stories of health care denials from health insurers.

One person said his mom's scan to check on her stage IV lung cancer was recently denied. In another post, a dad shared the letter UHC sent him denying a wheelchair for his son with cerebral palsy.

"A lot of people are in deep pain, and maybe didn't have anywhere to put that pain," Wilson says.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-h...o-social-media

[raisedbywolves]

I have seen that CEO's of other insurance companies (and other big companies that aren't insurance companies) are taking down their info on their C-Suite people. How about you try to be a good steward of the company assets WHILE ALSO BEING A GOOD HUMAN BEING?! Don't look at your C-Suite job as if you are Darth Vader. So now they will get security and then use that to try to raise premiums. Assholes.

[raisedbywolves]

https://news.sky.com/story/brian-tho...-park-13269331

Police in the US hunting for the man who shot dead United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York street have found money from the Monopoly board game inside a backpack they believe the gunman used.

Two knowledgeable sources told NBC News, Sky News' US partner, that the fake bank notes were discovered in the bag, which police found in Central Park after Mr Thompson was killed on Wednesday.

This guy is becoming a folk hero. Slow clap.

[Angiebla]

What is the monopoly money symbolize?

I dont think its a hit ordered by the wife anymore. It was a rando. They are never going to catch him.

[raisedbywolves]

What is the monopoly money symbolize?

Corporate greed.

I hope they don't catch him. These CEO's and oligarchs need to change their behavior, and they are scared right now.

[raisedbywolves]

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/sl...ife-airbrushed

Slain Healthcare CEO’s Life Airbrushed by Media

The coverage seems more like a knighthood than journalism, which, the saying goes, distinguishes itself from public relations in printing information someone else doesn’t want printed. Facts about Thompson’s life that he would not have wanted published of course exist (I detail some below). But the major media’s obsession with decorum — we mustn't speak ill of the dead! — has rendered it unable to tell the truth about who this man really was. Instead they fall back on airy praise, saying that Thompson was:

“well liked internally” (The Washington Post)

“a beloved father, husband” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

“a visionary leader” (The New York Times, quoting BlueCross CEO)

In some ways, Thompson had the same problems as anyone else. In April of 2017, the same month he became CEO of UnitedHeathcare’s Medicare & Retirement business, Thompson pled guilty to drunk driving, for which he served a couple days in jail at the Hennepin County Adult Corrections facility in Minnesota and later probation. And while much reporting has cast him as some kind of dedicated wife guy, he had been separated from his wife for years and lived in their own houses, property records show. In other words, Thompson’s life was in some ways ordinary. If anything I think these details humanize him — the opposite effect that the media’s fawning depiction of him as some titan on Mount Olympus has had.

[jennafyre]

Someone is being questioned now. They had a fake ID and a gun with silencer similar to the one used in the crime.

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/loca...dates/6053340/

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot to death last week at point-blank range in front of a midtown Manhattan hotel
By Jonathan Dienst, Tom Winter | NBC News, Marc Santia, Jennifer Millman and The Associated Press •

A man in the Altoona, Pennsylvania, area is being questioned Monday in connection with last week's UnitedHealthcare CEO killing in Manhattan, in part because he was found with a gun similar to the one used in the shooting, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The sources say it is too soon to determine if his case is connected to the death of Brian Thompson, but they are investigating it as a potentially significant development. According to the sources, customers at a local McDonald's thought he looked suspicious and called police. Arriving officers noticed a fake ID so took him in for questioning.

Once at the police station, the sources said, officers discovered the man had a gun similar to the one used in Thompson's killing, as well as a silencer and a fake New Jersey ID. The suspected gunman allegedly used a fake New Jersey ID when he checked into a Manhattan hostel last month.

Two senior law enforcement officials say the man in Altoona being questioned had the name "Marc Rosario" on his fake NJ ID. Three sources familiar with the matter say the suspected gunman checked into the Upper West Side hostel using a fake NJ ID with the name “Marc Rosario.”

The suspected gunman also may have taken a bus to get out of New York. Investigators are looking into whether the man being questioned had recently gotten off a bus from Philadelphia, according to a senior official. NYPD detectives are headed to the area to question the man, who sources said looked similar to the suspected gunman. Six law enforcement officials have identified the person in custody, though he has not been charged at this time.

Mayor Eric Adams was expected to address the update at a 1:30 p.m. press conference, which had been planned prior to Monday's development.

It comes as a private funeral is being held Monday for Thompson, the 50-year-old executive gunned down at point-blank range as he headed to a midtown hotel for an investors' conference last Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the plans.

[Nic B]

I hope they knew about the gun BEFORE he got to the station, because that is all kinds of WTF.