Tag Archives: insurance

UnitedHealthcare’s New CEO Announcement Draws a Frenzy of Dark Humor

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UnitedHealthcare has just promoted one of its C-Suiters to CEO — and the dark humor is already pouring in.

Six weeks after Brian Thompson was gunned down in the streets of Manhattan, UHC announced that it was naming Tim Noel, who formerly ran the insurance company's Medicare and retirement department, to the chief executive role. Almost as soon as that news dropped, social media lit up with gallows humor about the position's deadly history.

"Imagine getting that promotion?" wrote one X-formerly-Twitter user wrote. "I'm thinking Tim Noel may just be the bravest CEO in all of America."

Tim Noel: https://t.co/nbqfjxWz6u pic.twitter.com/mC0BCVkt8i

— The Pint (@ReadThePint) January 23, 2025

Others were far more pointed in their welcomes to the longtime UHC executive.

"I don't think it's THAT interesting that Tim Noel, new CEO for UnitedHealth, lives in Minneapolis," a Bluesky user quipped. "Minneapolis is where the UnitedHealth headquarters are located, so it just makes sense that he, and other CEOs, would live there, in Minneapolis, which as everyone on earth knows, is in Minnesota!"

On the Eat the Rich subreddit, meanwhile, the vibe was nothing short of feral.

"Looks scrawny," wrote a user whose display image features suspected Thompson assassin Luigi Mangione dressed like a saint. "Needs fattening up like the last one. Then it’ll be good eating!"

Obviously, nobody is actually calling for any harm to Noel, who has worked at UHC since 2007. As with Thompson's murder, these jokes instead highlight the rampant frustration Americans have with the gatekeepers of their healthcare — a bitter resentment that burst to the forefront of the national conversation after Thompson's assassination last month.

That anger was on full display in other posts and comments accusing Noel of being a "serial killer." Given that he likely ran UHC's Medicare department during at least part of the period when the company nearly tripled its post-acute services denial rate from 8.7 to 22.7 percent for Medicare patients, they might not be that far off the money, at least technically speaking.

More on Mangione: Americans Flood Chinese App RedNote, Discover Its Users Are Obsessed With Luigi Mangione

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UnitedHealth Is Asking Journalists to Remove Names and Photos of Its CEO From Published Work

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In the wake of Brian Thompson's murder, the UnitedHealth is now asking journalists to remove or obscure photos of its CEOs' names and faces.

In the wake of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's murder last week, the insurer's parent company is now asking journalists to remove photos of its remaining executives' names and faces.

After Futurism published a blog about "wanted" posters appearing in New York City that featured the names and faces of the CEOs of UHC's owner UnitedHealth Group and its prescription middleman Optum Rx, a spokesperson for the parent company reached out to ask if we would adjust our coverage to "leave out any names and images of our executives' identities," citing "safety concerns."

That original piece didn't include either CEO's name in its text, but the header image accompanying the article did show screenshots of a TikTok video showing the posters that had been spotted around Manhattan, which featured the execs' faces and names.

During these exchanges, the spokesperson repeatedly refused to say whether any specific and credible threats had been made to the people on the posters.

Out of an abundance of caution, we did decide to edit out the names and faces from the image.

But the request highlights the telling dynamics of the murder that have seized the attention of the American public for over a week now. While everyday people struggle to get the healthcare they need with no support — and frequently die during the process — the executives overseeing the system have operatives working behind the scenes to control the dissemination of information that makes them uncomfortable.

After all, these are business leaders who are paid immense sums to be public figures, and whose identities are listed on Wikipedia and business publications — not to mention these insurers' own websites, until they abruptly pulled them down in the wake of the slaying.

There's also something unsettling about the rush to decry the murder and censor information around other healthcare executives when children are killed by gun violence every week, with little reaction from lawmakers and elites beyond a collective shrug.

Per the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks firearm violence, there have been at least five mass shootings since Thompson was killed on December 4. There have also been two ongoing stories about children shooting and killing family members — one in which a seven-year-old accidentally killed his two-year-old brother, and another involving a toddler who shot his 22-year-old mother with her boyfriend's gun after discovering it lying around.

When anybody is killed with a firearm in the United States, whether they're a CEO or a young mother, it's a tragedy. But only one of those horrors activates a behind-the-scenes effort to protect future victims.

More on the UHC shooting: Americans Point Out That UnitedHealthcare Tried to Kill Them First

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