Insurance Execs Are Changing...Their Shorts
After a CEO's murder, here's how industry leaders are heeding the wake-up call
Dec. 6: Insurance executives respond to “wake-up call” … Anesthesia time-limit policy dies … NYT: Thompson wanted to change the industry … Hegseth failing to defend Hegseth defense nomination …
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The men and comparatively underpaid women who run the health-insurance industry have heard you, America.
Even if their health-care plans don’t cover vision, the nation’s insurance executives have seen the mass rejoicing in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. They’ve read all your social-media posts about murder-by-spreadsheet and horror stories of people who literally died because a UnitedHealthcare algorithm decided it was your time.
The executives have seen your rage. They’ve even seen the “Deny Defend Depose” memecoin that some cheeky crypto-bro launched just hours after those words were reported found on bullets and shell casings.
The surviving leaders of the insurance industry finally understand the reasons for your fury: The pain and anguish their companies have caused. And they are committed to doing something about it. They are committed to change.
Because Thompson’s death, the media reported yesterday, was a wake-up call.
So, are they going to stop killing people? Or impoverishing people? What exactly is the nature of this long-awaited wake-up call?
Well, Thompson’s murder was such a wake-up call that Anthem Blue Shield Blue Cross — caught in the social-media crossfire — abruptly awoke from its month-old anesthesia policy.
TFN told you yesterday that Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield was going to set time limits on anesthesia usage while you’re in surgery. Because who doesn’t want their surgeon racing the clock?
The new policy of charging for anesthesia beyond a predetermined arbitrary bullshit time limit had raised serious concerns among health experts, who warned of potential scenarios such as the one depicted in this simulation:
Obviously in response to The Fucking News coverage of this issue and definitely no one else’s coverage of it, Anthem Blue Shield Blue Cross announced yesterday that please don’t shoot them.
That’s right, they’re dropping their medieval anesthesia policy and will now resume letting patients sleep through their entire procedures. And then bankrupting them.
But it turns out Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield1 was the exception. All those other wake-up calls that the insurance industry is hearing? It’s not about changing their insurance policies.
In fact, the policies that inspire murderous rage in tens of millions of people aren’t changing at all.
The only policies these rich predators are changing is their not-getting-murdered policies. Turns out, they’re now even more in favor of themselves not getting murdered than they were on Tuesday.
And by God they’re willing to do something about it. Even if it hurts the bottom line that’s the reason they won’t pay to protect people who aren’t them.
That’s right, insurance executives are finally willing to shell out more money to prevent needless deaths. Theirs.
Here’s the full Wall Street Journal headline:
And it’s not just insurance. Virtually every industry that preys on and exploits us — NB: This is all the industries — is now hunkering down so they can continue sucking up our money.
“[M]any boards and CEOs across the U.S. today are asking their chief security officers for reviews of the current state of their executive-protection programs,” security consultant Dave Komendat told the Wall Street Journal.
Corteva, for instance, manufactures both pesticides and corporate brand names that sound better than “Pesticides, Inc.” And Corteva’s looking at armed security to protect their executives the way we’re not protected from pesticides.
“The threats are evolving and getting more violent,” former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told the Wall Street Journal.
Already, more than one out of four of the Standard and Poor’s 500 companies provide security for top executives outside their plush, luxury offices. The Wall Street Journal conveniently charted for us how much some top companies spend on out-of-office security for America’s top robber barons:
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, spends the most by far, due to a steady stream of threats to steal CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s lunch money.
In the past, executives have mostly been targeted with non-lethal projectiles. Like pies.
Why don’t all companies pay for protection? Turns out it’s expensive! I know, Newsfuckers, it’s hard to imagine corporate America skimping on costs when lives are at stake, but it’s true. And that will continue — except for the lives of the people who work there endangering everyone else’s lives.
And now they’re going to ground even online. 404 Media reports that some companies are taking down the pages listing their corporate leadership. (h/t)
Currently, publicly traded companies are required to list their corporate governance in federal filings. But the trend in U.S. law has been away from transparency for everything from nonprofits to private and even publicly held companies.
The obvious next step is utter anonymization. Someone’ll introduce a bill in the next Congress allowing executives to operate their money-extraction operations in total anonymity. In the name of the “security” we made our national god after 9/11.
The 1% will steadily work to erase their entire public footprint so they can live their lives behind their patrolled gates and walls, entering glamorous events through shielded passages, and secretly funding their alma mater’s shoddy construction of Undisclosed Donor Residence Hall.
Of course, the best way to protect them would simply be to restore the top marginal tax rates that decades ago hampered the emergence of predatory executives from the corporate primordial ooze. No illionaires, no problems.
THE MANHUNT At this point it seems possible that the murderer will never be caught. The fingerprint was smudged. Cops haven’t cracked the phone. And even the cops don’t seem to understand how vast the suspect list is.
One unnamed “senior law enforcement official” told the New York Times, “I’m confident that he’s going to be an ex-client, an ex-employee or a conspiracy theorist.”
My dude.
Honestly? Tell me this is a slick head fake to make our fugitive John Wilkes Copay Harvey In-Network Oswald complacent.
Because otherwise, where do we start with this list?
An ex-client? Y’know what happens to disgruntled ex-clients of insurance companies, my unnamed police dude? They fucking die.
Or they’re bicycling away from the murder scene on the one leg UnitedHealthcare didn’t refuse payment for.
What disgruntled ex-clients of UnitedHealthcare are not is healthy young men capable of jogging and biking.An ex-employee? This guy looks to be in his 20s. What the fuck job do we think hoodie-boy had where he’d have personal beef with the CEO?
And what the fuck could an insurance company have done to disgruntle this guy more than any other corporation routinely fucks over Generation Fucked? Remove the foosball table?A conspiracy theorist? Really? Where does a Newsfucker start? What kind of fucking “conspiracy theory” might Thompson’s killer believe?
That Thompson’s company deployed some crazy, way-out computer algorithm to kill people for money? What kind of QAnon flat-Earth craziness is that?
Oh:
So, yeah, if the cops are searching for someone pissed at UnitedHealthcare for denied coverage that left them a fit and healthy and athletic young man … or someone unbalanced enough to believe that rich people use computers to kill the rest of us for money…
…then, yeah, there’s a non-trivial chance this person’s gonna get away with it, hiding out in a nation of eager accomplices. (Or, given TFN’s luck, the unnamed cop will be totally right and it’ll turn out be an ex-client who also worked for Thompson and thought he was an alien Satan-worshiper who drinks the blood of actuaries.)
Thompson Was Insurance Industry’s Only Known Saint
In an industry of rich predators, murdered CEO Brian Thompson was the exception.
As TFN tried to tell you cynical Newsfuckers, corporate systems desensitize even the nicest of people and incentivize the creation of exploitative policy and practices. If we tell ourselves all corporate executives are evil, we’ll never focus on the real, systemic structures that wring evil-doing out of otherwise normal people.
And, sure enough — thank you, confirmation bias — now we get word that Thompson was trying to change the industry from the inside. Here’s the proof from the New York Times:
See? We lost a champion for change, Newsfuckers!
Now, you skeptical Newsfuckers may think this is bullshit. That it’s just one anonymous source, who works at the company in question, as reported by two journalists who don’t cover health care.
But before we reject this report, shouldn’t we have actual, hard proof that the company source is lying to counter the character assassination of the victim of actual assassination. Or at least evidence that the company might delay, deny, and defend him?
I mean, it’s not as if there’s contrary reporting from a health-industry news outlet complete with actual quotes to say otherwise!
BREAKING: There’s Contrary Reporting, Etc., Etc…
STAT News, which covers the healthcare industry, reported that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was a passionate, outspoken advocate of not changing jack shit.
Despite all the millions the current system put in his pocket, Thompson boldly spoke out in the system’s defense on multiple occasions, STAT News reported Wednesday.
According to STAT, “Thompson advocated for the current health care system and the Affordable Care Act [ACA] instead of broader reforms.”
In a UnitedHealth podcast two years ago, Thompson addressed the challenge of providing coverage to the 27 million people in this country who lacked health insurance.
His solution? Radical, aggressive initiatives to change nothing.
“Look, we get it. Our health system is not perfect,” said Thompson, who was proof of that. “But we do believe that the infrastructure that we have here in America is sound and the core componentry that, I believe, is needed to expand access and ultimately achieve universal coverage is in place.”
STAT’s description of Thompson’s advocacy for Obamacare was so dry it could serve as secretary of defense:
Thompson lauded the “existing platforms like the [ACA] exchanges and like Medicaid that we already have in the marketplace today,” both of which bring in billions of dollars in revenue for UnitedHealthcare.
What change did Thompson favor? “[H]e also wanted Congress to ‘permanently extend’ enhanced subsidies for ACA plans.” In other words, provide more taxpayer money to pay UnitedHealthcare.
FWIW It may not be just the hippies and anarchists doing the happy dance over Thompson’s murder. Zoom in on this picture of police at the crime scene:
I know, I know. They’re laughing at something else.
Probably.
TRUMP WATCH It’s now Day Three of President-elect Donald Trump’s silence about the murder of a rich, white, male corporate executive just a few blocks from Trump Tower in his hometown. The only explanation I can come up with is that the killer appears to be white. No idea if this matters, it’s just my new pet obsession.
Four Quickies
Donald Trump is outsourcing his China diplomacy job to a guy who outsourced hundreds of other jobs to China. That’s right, Trump’s point person on the ground in China to do battle over outsourcing and trade disputes is … former Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), cheerleader for American companies sending jobs to China. As Politico notes: “In his business career, Perdue was a strong proponent of moving jobs from the U.S. to Asia to save on manufacturing costs.”
As John Fugelsang noted, the man who opposes women in combat sent his Mom into battle for him yesterday. And I’m sure Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth won’t blame Mom’s gender for what appears to be her failure. He asked Mom to lobby for his nomination. But unnamed Republicans tell The Hill they expect Hegseth to retreat in the face of overwhelming enemy odds. Of course, male senators aren’t talking on the record. The person taking point in the counteroffensive is another woman, military veteran and survivor of sexual violence Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were on Capitol Hill yesterday and, Jesus budget-cutting Christ, Newsfuckers, my dossier on this DOGE DOGEshit is so DOGEgone packed I’m gonna have to do a whole-ass Bonus Story on these cosplaying motherfuckers.
South Dakota flood victims are warning that giving Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) oversight of the Federal Emergency Management Agency as Homeland [sic] Security secretary would be a disaster.
TCB
SORRY NOT SORRY Gonna brag just a wee bit here, to assuage my insecurities for one brief shining moment.
Substack has a leaderboard of political newsletters. When TFN launched we were at 215. This morning, we cracked the top 150. And with your help sharing and engaging and pointing out our newsfucking fuck-ups, we’re still growing. Thanks, Newsfuckers!
PICS! More orders coming in at The TFN Shop!2 So excited to see folks in their glorious — albeit cheaply made and probably fall-apart-in-a-year — TFN swag! So when those caps and t-shirts start showing up, we expect you to share pics with us of you Newsfuckers in full dress!
You still have until Dec. 14 to use the FINGNEWS10 codeword and get 10% off your order!
SOCIAL-ISM We’re on at least 77% of all the social medias! Namely, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Spoutible.
Go get ‘em, kids. And have a great weekend.
Yes, TFN kept changing the name. If you’re gonna give your company a stupid-ass long name at least have the decency to squoosh it into one stupid-ass long word like UnitedHealthcareGroupCoInc.
Yes, calling it The TFN Shop means we’re calling it The The Fucking News Shop. You’re telling this to a guy who collects DC Comics, aka Detective Comics Comics. I hear you.
As an RN, the most galling part of this is that corporate health offices will have even more security, while healthcare workers are assaulted every day, and have also been shot at work get almost nothing.
I love TFN too. I read TFN, Heather Cox Richardson, Jeff Tiedrich, and the Friendly Atheist every morning for my news. Fuck the MSM.