Brandon Edwards
Brandon Edwards is founder and CEO of Unlock Health.
This essay was originally published in PRovoke Media and is republished with permission.
There are moments in the public consciousness that feel as if they must certainly lead to change. There is shock. There is confusion. There is rhetoric. But does change necessarily follow? December 4, 2024, and the following days surely represent one of those moments.
When Brian Thompson approached the Hilton for UnitedHealth Group’s investor day, he had no way of knowing what was to come. As the CEO and public face of the largest health insurance company in the U.S., he became a stand-in for the industry as a whole, and he paid for it with his life. Every name at the bottom of a denial letter. Every episode of care delayed with immeasurable harm to the patient. Every unhelpful customer service representative. Every administrative burden imposed by the health insurance industry on frustrated patients and providers. It appears that Brian Thompson was the encapsulation of everything that is broken and dysfunctional about healthcare in America. That may or may not have been on the mind of his killer, but it seems to have been on the minds of every TikToker and X user in the hours and days that followed.
Since Thompson’s murder, insurance industry executives have taken their photos off websites, closed their social media accounts, and stepped-up security. It is an incredibly scary time, and CEOs in other industries should be paying attention. Health system CEOs should be paying attention too. The industry that cares for people is seen by many as doing anything but that.
The response in mainstream and social media has been disturbing to say the least. The Wall Street Journal—you read that right—asked in a headline if murdering healthcare CEOs is justified. Yes, it was a rhetorical question, but the WSJ goes on to blame the government more than anything the industry does. The New York Times quoted people posting “Thoughts and deductibles,” instead of the ubiquitous thoughts and prayers in comments on a CNN story. UnitedHealthcare had to close commentary on their post honoring his life because the commentary was so vitriolic. When did this become our country? When did this become okay, in any form, and directed at any person?
A new survey this week revealed some frightening findings:
- Most voters (68%) think the actions of the killer against Thompson were unacceptable, while 17% found them acceptable, an Emerson College poll out this week found.
- Young voters were far more split. While 40% found them unacceptable, per the poll, 41% found the killer’s actions acceptable. About 24% found them “somewhat acceptable and 17% “completely acceptable.”
In a guest essay for The New York Times, Andrew Witty, UnitedHealth Group CEO began with a touching tribute to Mr. Thompson: father, husband, colleague, and friend. He then went on to write:
Health care is both intensely personal and very complicated, and the reasons behind coverage decisions are not well understood. 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.
The piece began to introduce subtle justifications for all of the bad business practices and administrative hurdles that make insurance companies reviled. There was an unmistakable “you just don’t understand” tone to much of it, interwoven into reflections on the legacy of a murdered man. And so, the quest to keep things as they are begins.
I have spent my life battling insurance companies on behalf of patients, their families, and healthcare providers. This attitude will not serve the industry, or the country, right now. We need an attitude of genuine humility to address a healthcare system in desperate need of change. A healthcare system so frustrating, difficult to navigate, and anger-inducing that people want to kill people over it. We can—and should—simultaneously condemn that violent sentiment and acknowledge that systemic change is required, and urgently.
Andrew Witty is right that healthcare is intensely personal. I would add that it’s confusing, emotional, and full of language that’s utterly foreign. It’s also expensive, and the majority of people can’t afford to have the care they need without insurance. When a faceless bureaucrat or incomprehensible policy is placed in the way of that care, it’s maddening on a fundamental level. There is a sense of outrage that care recommended by a trusted healthcare provider is unavailable. People are angry, and worse, they feel powerless. Right now, all of that anger and powerlessness is bubbling up and boiling over, painting a murderer as a vigilante.
It seems obvious that today’s U.S. healthcare system is designed around insurance companies—not patients, not physicians, and certainly not employers or taxpayers. It’s difficult to overlook how the inequities of our current healthcare system favor insurance companies over providers and patients. Even so, I don’t believe that Brian Thompson’s murderer dispensed justice. He walked up to a man going to work and killed him. Before his murderer was even caught, the media tied his murder to his job and the conversation had started to shift to justification. That should be a chilling thought for all of us.
Fixing what’s broken in the healthcare system is a moral imperative, yet make no mistake, it will be a long and arduous campaign. There is simply too much money, and far too much political influence, in the hands of these multi-billion-dollar companies for change to come easily. UnitedHealth Group alone is the fifth largest corporation on the planet.
I will continue to be a voice calling for payors to discontinue unfair business practices and remove administrative barriers to health coverage. Change must come through conversation, negotiation, and understanding, not violence. As 2025 unfolds, I am committed to being a positive (if loud) voice for the evolution of managed care in the U.S.
In closing, let’s remember Brian Thompson the man, a human being who, according to some accounts, could have been a voice for change from within UnitedHealthcare.
Dehumanizing him and turning him into an effigy for all that is deeply wrong with the system as a whole does him and his family a disservice. Moreover, every justification of this kind of violence chips away at our collective soul. This is not who we are, and if it’s starting to be, then that’s a change we must make as well.
We are better than that. And the U.S. healthcare system can be better than it is today, too.