Brian Thompson Was Never Content With the Status Quo
Andrew Witty, CEO of UnitedHealth, parent company of UnitedHealthcare:
We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people’s frustrations with it. No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did. It’s a patchwork built over decades. Our mission is to help make it work better. We are willing to partner with anyone, as we always have — health care providers, employers, patients, pharmaceutical companies, governments and others — to find ways to deliver high-quality care and lower costs.
(Emphasis mine.) Bullshit. Your one and only mandate is to extract as much value for your stakeholders as possible, health and human life be damned.
Health care is both intensely personal and very complicated, and the reasons behind coverage decisions are not well understood. We share some of the responsibility for that. Together with employers, governments and others who pay for care, we need to improve how we explain what insurance covers and how decisions are made. Behind each decision lies a comprehensive and continually updated body of clinical evidence focused on achieving the best health outcomes and ensuring patient safety.
You've conveniently left out the mandate for profit generation, Andrew.
While the health system is not perfect, every corner of it is filled with people who try to do their best for those they serve.
Brian was one of those people. He was raised in the same Iowa farmhouse as his mom. His dad spent more than 40 years unloading trucks at grain elevators. B.T., as we knew him, worked farm jobs as a kid and fished at a gravel pit with his brother. 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.
Pandering to middle America, ✔
The ideas he advocated were aimed at making health care more affordable, more transparent, more intuitive, more compassionate — and more human.
Fuck you, Andrew Witty.
I've said this before, but corporations are money-making machines. That's the sole reason for their existence: to generate profit for the stakeholders and shareholders. That's it. Dont ever fool yourself into thinking that any corporation has your best interest at heart — ever.