UnitedHealth CEO Sparks Uproar After Unbelievable New York Times Op-Ed

Critics are torching a New York Times op-ed Friday by the chief of UnitedHealthcare’s dad or mum firm, arguing that the $23.5 million-salaried govt’s message overwhelmingly ignored the failures actively perpetuated by his firm within the American well being care system.

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty condemned the American public’s gleeful response to the demise of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was assassinated by a masked gunman final week on the streets of New York City simply hours earlier than an investor assembly.

In roughly 600 phrases, he additionally tried to deflect his insurance coverage community’s accountability within the rising inequity in America’s well being care system, vaguely pointing to a “patchwork” of failures a long time within the making whereas swearing that his company community—which reported $22 billion in income in 2023 alone, almost 3 times the determine reported by CVS, the second-most-profitable medical health insurance firm that 12 months—was constantly preventing to “ship high-quality care and decrease prices.”

But readers weren’t shopping for it.

Instead, they swarmed the Times with adverse suggestions, piling on greater than 2,500 feedback inside hours of the article’s publication, quickly disabling its Comments part. Users shared their very own horrible experiences with the medical health insurance business, deriding Witty’s vapid evaluation as a “self-serving essay” that did nothing to deal with UnitedHealthcare’s position in a system that prioritizes shareholder income over profitable medical outcomes for its purchasers.

Federal information from 2022 compiled by the private finance web site ValuePenguin discovered that UnitedHealthcare far outpaced its rivals when it got here to denying protection, rejecting 32 p.c or roughly one in three claims. In 2024, the insurer’s dad or mum group spent greater than $5.8 million lobbying Congress on well being care–associated points.

Meanwhile, Americans are paying greater than ever for medical health insurance, with prices far outpacing the speed of inflation. A Kaiser Family Foundation report revealed earlier this 12 months discovered that the overwhelming majority of U.S. adults are fearful about with the ability to afford a significant medical expense, no matter their monetary place.