this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
469 points (99.4% liked)

News

29346 readers
3410 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

UnitedHealth Group announced a new chief executive Tuesday, a sudden and surprising change following the fatal shooting in December of its UnitedHealthcare subsidiary's leader.

Andrew Witty stepped down from leading UnitedHealth for unspecified “personal reasons,” the company said. Stephen J. Hemsley, who served as chief executive from 2006 to 2017, will return to the role and remain board chairman. Witty will serve as a senior adviser to Hemsley, the company said in a news release. 

UnitedHealth has been the focus of sharp criticism over the health insurance industry's practices and has seen its stock plummet in the past year. The Justice Department has investigated its business activities.

top 46 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

funny these 2, hemsley and witty are both british, i likened to them not being able to grift or profit off of healthcare in europe because of thier single payer system and general resistance to privatized healthcare , so they fled to the US at some point.

[–] Allonzee@lemmy.world 30 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

His silence about why says it all.

He isn't sorry for what he did, murder customers in swaths to metastasize private profit in our American deathcare state sanctioned confidence scheme, he's sorry he may face violent reprisal for what he did.

I'm glad he's on record leaving with no apologetic plea, off to count his money from all the murders he oversaw.

When terminal capitalism collapses, coming very soon, and he has nothing of value to pay his guards and security patrols with, the survivors will remember who he is and what he did.

"I... I was just following ~~orders~~ the invisible hand of the market!!!"

[–] Geetnerd@lemmy.world 10 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

He's afraid he'll catch a fatal dose of high velocity lead poisoning.

[–] Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 2 points 17 minutes ago

Or as Bon Jovi once referred to it "lead medicine".

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 2 points 5 hours ago

he wasnt even sorry that his underling died.

[–] DudeAbides1502@lemm.ee 28 points 10 hours ago

Luigi, Luigi, where art thou

[–] Whateley@lemm.ee 18 points 10 hours ago

"Personal reasons" = I'm fucking terrified

[–] CalipherJones@lemmy.world 109 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I worked at a meeting for healthcare executives. They specifically told us not to mention that it was a healthcare conference. They're scared of justice.

[–] topherclay@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Healthcare or health insurance? We shouldn't conflate the two just because The health insurance company has "healthcare" in its name and it got away with that stupid trick in the media.

If healthcare executives are afraid, then they have every incentive to be making sure people untangle that conflation of terminology that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of.

Health insurance is not healthcare.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 minutes ago

Health insurance is not healthcare.

Being glib. It's the denial of healthcare isn't it? Lol

[–] chosensilence@pawb.social 32 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

tell me more, tell me more!

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 23 points 13 hours ago

Didja get very far?

[–] 2ugly2live@lemmy.world 47 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

"Should I try and fix the mistakes of my predecessor? Help people? Nah, I'll just quit cause I don't wanna be shot for killing millions of people. Daddy needs a new yacht."

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 hours ago

I worry this won't prevent any vigilante retribution if Luigi's jury has a heart or a critical eye and someone finds this guy's address.

It's gonna be a bloodbath and few people will feel any guilt.

[–] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 17 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Why can't all CEOs just do this right now? Especially the tech companies.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

the tech ceos all have security around them at all times, so its probably hard to get to them. plus they all have bunkers in other countries.

[–] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 1 points 32 minutes ago

I feel like if you killed a tech bro the security would try to blend into the shadows in the hopes nobody stops the autopay.

[–] AlexLost@lemm.ee 8 points 9 hours ago

Sounds like the guy stepping back in is the one who set up these terrible policies in the first place. This is a downgrade if anything.

[–] Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee 49 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

The gravy train of giant margin drugs is coming to an end.

Medicaid is gonna get gutted and drugs won't be very profitable in the US overall. I suspect the pharma answer to this may be suspending sales in all other nations so long as the US patents are live, the profits here are so above and beyond all other places in the world that there's little reason to focus on global markets if the restriction is lowest common denominator pricing in the US.

I worked in pharma for a while at a level that interacted with C level executives and the executive leadership of said companies. I've seen where the money is and seen internal numbers. US oncology sales are almost all profits.

[–] Zenith@lemm.ee 19 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

I follow you but I also wonder, if no one can afford those drugs to begin with how viable is a plan like this? If the giant margins are ending, people have no income to purchase medicine with, and the US isn’t subsidizing it, how exactly are these meds getting to the public? Suspending sales globally to court poor Americans who can only dream of paying for meds doesn’t seem like an especially bright plan

[–] Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee 15 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

So we CAN afford these drugs to begin with, because employer sponsored health plans with minimal coverage cost around $14000 and have $6500++ copays (I don't remember today's limits for copays, but you have to pay those copays out of pocket before an insurance company covers drugs typically.) The actual drugs cost pennies to make but sell for hundreds to thousands to hundreds of thousands. The prices that are listed for these drugs at retail are not actually what the insurance pays for these drugs, we're never going to see those figures, but they're aligned to maximize profits from the industry. Pharmacy benefit managers also collude by using a third party service to recommend pricing.

I'm too lazy to find good sources of material, but revenue in the US for pfizer is more in the US than the rest of the world combined. https://www.statista.com/statistics/267877/revenues-of-pfizer-in-submarkets-worldwide/ (I was able to view this without a subscription.)

Last year they had about ~63600 million in revenue. ~38691 million last year was in the US alone.

~16057 for "developed markets" aka europe and wealthy nations ~8879 for "developing nations" e.g. africa, latin america, poor asian countries.

So 38 billion in the us vs 63.6 billion total revenue.

If you have to choose between keeping US revenue or keeping non-us global revenue, you're gonna choose the US. It's not even close.

I'm guessing they can license their drug to some other business to sell internationally and get out of first party sales, but it's possible they may have a legal mechanism to skirt this already since it's typical for the US business to be a separate company than the holding company, and all the international businesses are separate companies under said holding company, it's hard to say. I don't have any inside information for today's strategy.

[–] albert180@piefed.social 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

The US isn't subsidizing. Most of the cost of a drug is marketing and paying obscene amounts for small biotechs and then shifting that cost into drug prices.

Also nearly no one pays Sticker Prices in the US for Drugs and Healthcare. They have to charge an insane price, so some insurance guy can negotiate an astronomical "discount"

[–] Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee 7 points 15 hours ago

Just to tack onto this... it's possible that we will see different branded drugs, and perhaps even slightly modified drugs to contain effectively a placebo to go through clinical trials concurrently with the primary drug. From there they just release one drug in the US and the other drug exclusively everywhere else.

That's just one creative way to keep prices exorbitantly high. They can also target medical devices aka the delivery mechanism (think pre-packaged syringes) to try and keep profits high. Just release a US only delivery mechanism and suddenly it's different than the rest of the world. I've worked at companies that slightly altered the injector of their drugs to keep their monopoly going, as doctors preferred the improved injector that had no generic due to being in copyright, even after the drug patent expired.

The pharma lobby is so wealthy and powerful though I sincerely doubt even dumpy can fight them. There's a reason why biden started with just a handful of drugs, it built a foundation to slowly drain their profits while their current patents run out and they adapt to the new dynamic.

There's also all those health insurance companies that legally can only profit a % of overall revenue that will face severe profit cuts if treatment costs actually dive, drugs are a key component to building a sizable margin today.___

[–] some_designer_dude@lemmy.world 188 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

I hope it’s from fear of dying in the streets in a sea of laughter and applause…

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 67 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

Unfortunately it's probably because the shareholders are currently suing UH because after Luigi was charged, UH started actually not denying claims anymore for a bit...this aggravated them and they are saying that they were not made aware of the "impact" this change would make to their share values

Human scum

[–] Bahnd@lemmy.world 28 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

To add to this, innocent until proven guilty, and while Luigi is being dragged through the system, it is proper posting to not state that he did it until a verdict is read.

[–] pigup@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago

This is how they really are. They don't care at all. It's so hard to fathom. I can only relate this to fictional evil characters, but these are many real people. They know exactly the harm and destruction they cause, but we are less than ants to them.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 61 points 18 hours ago

I'd settle for "needed healthcare and was denied coverage".

[–] Geetnerd@lemmy.world 66 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

"My doctor, after years of complaints from myself, finally diagnosed my mystery illness: an allergy to lead. Specifically, the high velocity type. It is with regret I must resign, to recover."

[–] thesohoriots@lemmy.world 18 points 18 hours ago

“It starts with a small, bright red dot on your chest”

[–] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 17 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

They better be scared of the people they hurt

[–] Shootingstarrz17@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago
[–] nkat2112@sh.itjust.works 30 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

I wish him and all board, leadership members of private healthcare insurance the karma that they deserve.

[–] Jellyman@lemm.ee 27 points 18 hours ago

He’s scared. Good.

[–] boydster@sh.itjust.works 27 points 19 hours ago

That right there is the face of evil. Andrew Witty is a true piece of shit.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 16 points 18 hours ago

There’ll soon come a day when the C-suite officials of unpopular companies are only referred to by their initials, like the heads of spy agencies.

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 6 points 15 hours ago

I wonder if executives think that just because they stop being executives they stop being evil

[–] DoucheAsaurus@fedia.io 7 points 17 hours ago
[–] griff@lemmings.world 6 points 17 hours ago

possibly to dodge a bullet or two?

[–] stinky@redlemmy.com 5 points 18 hours ago