It’s safe to say UnitedHealth isn’t the most beloved company out there. The for-profit insurance company has ruined (and ended!) countless lives, been embroiled in many controversial denials of care, has faced SEC investigation for fraud, fought legal action for overbilling Medicare, and routinely humiliates those who rely on it for medical treatment.
All of which meant that when Brian Thompson was executed on the streets of New York on Dec. 4, 2024, few shed a tear. Now the Guardian has released a shocking new investigation that indicates the company has expanded its scope from run-of-the-mill cruelty to outright murder.
The article details how UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes massive bonuses to “slash hospital transfers for ailing residents”, effectively denying them hospital treatment to save the insurer a few bucks. The reporting found that many of those denied transfer suffered long-term medical issues, with one patient receiving permanent brain damage.
Blood money
UnitedHealth secretly pressured nurses to change patients' records to include DNRs without their consent, so those patients would die instead of being saved with medical interventions that could cost UnitedHealth money.
— •spooky•girl•cassiopeia•™ (@sadgirlcassi) May 22, 2025
This is outright murder. https://t.co/GYTdHxvCqg pic.twitter.com/UHkbBoH8Ad
But wait, it gets worse! One of the most horrifying tactics details is that United Health monitored the rates of “do not resuscitate” (DNR) and “do not intubate” (DNI) orders for nursing home patients. These permit doctors to allow someone to die if their heart stops beating, or if they are intubated in case of a medical emergency.
Nursing homes considered to have low numbers of DNR/DNI patients were then pressured to boost their numbers. The article reports that multiple current and former nurses claim that (as per the article): “UnitedHealth managers pressed nurse practitioners to persuade Medicare Advantage members to change their “code status” to DNR even when patients had clearly expressed a desire that all available treatments be used to keep them alive.”
Patients with DNR/DNI orders on their files are much more profitable for UnitedHealth as, once they’re dead, the company doesn’t need to continue paying for their medical care. As you might imagine, jaws are on the floor. Comments include “good lord”, “speechless”, and “savages”. And, as you can probably predict, many references to one Mr Luigi Mangione.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Binding medical care to shareholder value is a recipe for a mile-high stack of corpses: the less treatment UnitedHealth has to pay for, the more profit they make. Shareholders demand annual growth, so what better way to achieve that than gradually tightening the metaphorical noose around their customers’ necks?
Even knowing all that, this is monstrous behavior from UnitedHealth. How do these people sleep at night?
Published: May 22, 2025 06:30 am