Health insurers were looking forward to an improved political climate under the Trump administration. Things may not turn out to be so simple.
After four years of strict scrutiny under President Biden, a Donald Trump victory is expected to lead to regulatory relief, particularly for the Medicare Advantage sector. Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, TV personality Mehmet Oz, has voiced strong support for private insurers. Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick as Secretary of Health and Human Services, is a fierce critic of the pharmaceutical and food industries, with insurance companies barely mentioned.
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. “I think back to the day United Healthcare denied a one-night hospital stay for my 12-year-old child as ‘medically unnecessary’ after ASD heart repair surgery,” one user wrote on X. Another shared this: “Today I think of the time United Healthcare suddenly decided to stop paying for my chemotherapy and didn’t bother to tell me.” A company Facebook post expressing sadness over the killing of its insurance division CEO Brian Thompson generated more than 70,000 laughing emojis. “Thoughts and prior consent,” read a typical comment.
Joking about the murder of a human being – a husband and father – is extremely insensitive. The claims about UnitedHealthcare made by people on X have not been independently verified. And it should be needless to say that no one should face threats or violence, no matter how controversial the health policy debate may be.
Yet the negative feelings towards health insurers cannot be ignored, not even by policymakers, the companies themselves and their shareholders. At the very least, they underscore the widespread anger over the perceived dysfunction of the American health care system, exposing it as even more deeply rooted than how it may have been previously understood. In recent years, insurers have been accused of denying coverage to protect their profit margins, a criticism the killer apparently alluded to with the words “deny,” “defend” and “impeach” scrawled in permanent marker on bullet casings found outside the prison . Hilton in the center.
