Health insurers were looking forward to an improved political environment in the Trump administration. Things might not turn out to be so simple.
After four years of stringent oversight under President Biden, a Donald Trump victory has been expected to usher in regulatory relief, particularly for the Medicare Advantage sector. Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the TV personality Mehmet Oz, has voiced strong support for private insurers. Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary, is a tough critic of the pharmaceutical and food industries, with hardly any mention of insurance companies.
But in the wake of the fatal shooting of a UnitedHealth Group executive, there has been an outpouring of negative public sentiment toward private insurers. “Remembering the day United Healthcare denied a one-night hospital stay for my 12yo child as ‘medically unnecessary’ following ASD heart repair surgery,” wrote one user on X. Another shared this: “Today I’m thinking about the time United Healthcare suddenly decided to stop paying for my chemotherapy and didn’t bother telling me.” A Facebook post from the company expressing sorrow over the killing of Brian Thompson, chief executive of the insurance unit, prompted more than 70,000 laugh emojis. “Thoughts and prior authorizations,” went a typical comment.
Joking about the murder of a human being—a husband and father—is deeply insensitive. The claims made about UnitedHealthcare by individuals on X haven’t been independently verified. And it should be needless to say that no one should face threats or violence, no matter how contentious the debate over health policy might be.
Yet the negative feelings on display toward health insurers can’t be ignored, including by policymakers, the companies themselves and their shareholders. At the very least, they underscore the widespread anger over the perceived dysfunction of the American healthcare system, and expose it as even more deep-seated than how it previously might have been understood. In recent years, insurers have been accused of denying coverage to protect their profit margins, a criticism that the killer seemingly alluded to with the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” scrawled with a permanent marker on bullet casings found outside the Midtown Hilton.
