UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty on Friday conceded the U.S. health care system is plagued with imperfection, addressing for the first time the collective uproar unleashed by the murder of top insurance executive Brian Thompson.
“We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people’s frustrations with it,” Witty wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did. It’s a patchwork built over decades.”
UnitedHealth Group’s mission “is to help make it work better,” he continued, calling on “health care providers, employers, patients, pharmaceutical companies, governments and others” to help “find ways to deliver high-quality care and lower cost.”
The guest essay marked Witty’s first public comments since last week’s fatal shooting of Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a division of UnitedHealth Group and the nation’s largest health insurance provider.
Thompson was gunned down in Manhattan the morning of Dec. 4 in what police have called a “premeditated, preplanned, targeted attack.” He’d been visiting the city from Minnesota for an investor conference sponsored by the health insurance giant at the Residences Hilton Club in Midtown, where he was slated to give a speech.
Police said Thompson was walking from his hotel toward the venue on W. 54th St. near Sixth Ave., when he was ambushed by a masked gunman around 6:45 a.m. The CEO was fatally struck in the attack and pronounced dead some 30 minutes later.
In the days since, social media has been flooded with posts expressing contempt for the insurance industry. Some reveled in Thompson’s death as others hailed the accused shooter, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, as a hero.
AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
A poster depicting Luigi Mangione hangs outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel on Thursday. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Mangione was arrested after a days-long manhunt at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa. and charged in New York with second-degree murder, three counts of illegal weapons possession and forgery.
Witty on Friday defended his slain executive, calling Thompson one of the people who tried “to do their best for those they serve.”
Born and raised in an Iowa farmhouse, Thompson grew up working outdoors and fishing “at a gravel pit” with his brother, Witty wrote.
“He never forgot where he came from, because it was the needs of people who live in places like Jewell, Iowa, that he considered first in finding ways to improve care,” he said.
Witty also addressed the vitriol swirling online, which has also been directed at others who work for UnitedHealth Group.
“No employees — be they the people who answer customer calls or nurses who visit patients in their homes — should have to fear for their and their loved ones’ safety,” Witty wrote. “The people of UnitedHealth Group are nurses, doctors, patient and client advocates, technologists and more.”
