United Health Group has seen its share price crater after the assassination of its well-regarded CEO and subsequent fury over the healthcare giant’s greed.
The company’s share price has plummeted by approximately $45 billion since the December 4 shooting of CEO Brian Thompson, allegedly by Luigi Mangione, 26.
Since December 3, the last day of trading prior to Thompson’s death, the share price dropped by 10 percent, its steepest weekly drop since March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic erupted, reports CNN.
And in the week since Thompson’s slaying, UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, has seen its share price drop by 8 percent.
Thompson’s murder captured international attention, including bringing widespread scrutiny to the controversial nature of America’s healthcare insurance industry and its unpopular practices.
Analysts say the health giant losing a well-regarded CEO seen by the market as capable of running the company has likely contributed to the stock slump. One told CNN that the stock is currently undervalued.
United Healthcare has also been forced to contend with a tidal wave of negative publicity despite the horrific killing of its former boss, who was a father of two.
Thompson slammed for his reported approval of a ‘malicious’ AI system that denied 90 percent of patient coverage, which was found to particularly target the elderly.
Thousands of Americans have accused the firm of putting profits before customers’ health and claimed that UnitedHealth symbolizes all that is wrong with for-profit healthcare.
UnitedHealth Group suffered a dramatic fall in its share price of approximately $45 million since the CEO of its insurance branch was gunned down by an assassin in Manhattan six days ago
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, 50, was shot dead December 4 by a masked gunman outside Manhattan’s Hilton Hotel
Luigi Mangione is pictured being bundled into an extradition hearing in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Tuesday
The big losses UnitedHealth Group has suffered since Thompson’s death were addressed by equity analyst David Windley at Jeffries, as CNN reported that he told client the selloff in its share price ‘seems unjustified.’
‘Shooting was chilling, and the social media reaction was inhumane,’ he added.
He also reportedly told clients there would likely not be a ‘regulatory crackdown’ on the healthcare industry, despite the newfound scrutiny on its practices.
The day after Thompson’s killing, UnitedHealth’s rival BlueCross BlueShield announced a controversial policy where they would cap the amount of anesthesia a patient undergoing surgery would be covered for.
The company subsequently reversed the policy a day later.
In response, former Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz came under fire as she shared the name and picture of BlueCross BlueShield’s CEO, in an apparent attempt to send an online mob in the executive’s direction.
She wrote: ‘And people wonder why we want these executives dead.’
It was one of several shared by Lorenz on Bluesky, including sharing her group chat’s response.
‘Woke up to see this spammed in my group chats,’ Lorenz wrote alongside a celebratory image that read, ‘CEO DOWN.’
‘People have very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because these executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering,’ she wrote on a different post.
‘As someone against death and suffering, I think it’s good to call out this broken system and the ppl in power who enable it.’
The aftermath of the shooting saw a number of tasteless responses, also including a ‘lookalike’ contest held for the shooter in Manhattan.
Suspected shooter Luigi Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday morning.
He appeared before an extradition court Tuesday afternoon and is fighting attempts to send him back to New York to face a second-degree murder charge in the Big Apple, where Thompson was killed.
New York only files first-degree murder charges in aggravated circumstances – when the victim was a police officer, first responder, witness in a criminal trial or had suffered torture.
Mangione was denied bail and filmed ranting as he was bundled into court that the charges brought against him were ‘an insult to the American people.’
He grew up in a wealthy family and suffered debilitating back pain, which resulted in him undergoing extensive surgery in 2023.
Mangione was found with a manifesto saying healthcare executives were ‘parasites’ who ‘had it coming.’
