Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 9 Things to Know About UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot to death in New York on December 4. Luigi Mangione is charged with murdering Thompson. Thompson's murder made headlines around the globe along with the fact that he was named in an insider trading lawsuit in the months before his murder. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy looks at everything we know about Thompson with his former security officer Philip Klein and independent journalist Ken Klippenstein in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lccrimefix and access information about almost anyone!Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guests:Philip KleinKen Klippenstein https://x.com/kenklippensteinCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hi, I'm Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare. That was Brian Thompson in a video from 2022, two years before he was murdered on the street in New York City. I take a look at Thompson. Who was he and what was going on in his life at the time he

was killed? Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Since Brian Thompson was murdered on December 4th, much of the discussion has revolved around the search for his killer. And there's been a lot of discussion about healthcare and the health insurance industry. Thompson was the CEO of the largest health insurance company in the country, and there were some controversies and complications in his life that I'll discuss. There were also concerns about United Healthcare and other health insurance companies denying claims for care. Since the arrest of Luigi Mangione for Thompson's murder, we've heard a lot about him. Police believe Mangione viewed the murder of Brian Thompson as a, quote, symbolic takedown. But we haven't heard as much about Brian Thompson, who he was as a person, other than he was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Thompson grew up in Iowa.

One of his former teachers told The New York Times that he was an excellent student and a model person, a super kid. Thompson's LinkedIn says that he attended the University of Iowa, graduating in 1997 with a degree in accounting, and he was the valedictorian of his class. In April 2021, Thompson's predecessor, Andrew Witte, praised Thompson when announcing he'd been named CEO of the company. Brian's experience, relationships, and values make him especially well-suited to help UnitedHealthcare improve how healthcare works for consumers, physicians, employers, governments, and our other partners. Thompson had worked at UnitedHealthcare for 20 years. He joined the company in 2004 and worked his way up to the top position. As CEO of UnitedHealth Group, Brian Thompson was responsible for leading growth across the company. Thompson was paid $10.2 million per year. In a November 2022 video, Thompson talked about the company. Thompson was paid $10.2 million per year. In a November 2022 video,

Thompson talked about the company's priorities. Our mission and values are focused on helping people live healthier lives and making the health system work better for everyone. I'm joining you from our innovation center here in our headquarters in Minneapolis. But not everyone was happy with UnitedHealthcare. The Department of Justice

filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company just last month after it tried to acquire a home healthcare and hospice company. And there have been countless complaints about UnitedHealthcare denying claims and care for patients. And Brian Thompson and other executives, along with UnitedHealthcare, have been sued for insider trading by the City of Hollywood Firefighters Pension Fund. Brian Thompson specifically was accused in the suit of selling more than $15 million worth of stock in UnitedHealthcare as the Department of Justice investigated the company. The suit claims the executives knew about the antitrust investigation and didn't tell shareholders about it. And when the news broke in the Wall Street Journal, the stock price took a huge hit.

After Brian Thompson was murdered, his wife told NBC News that he had received threats, but the morning he was shot, he did not have a security detail with him. I want to take a moment to tell you about truthfinder.com. It's one of the largest public record search services out there. Just log onto truthfinder.com and put in a person's name.

Within moments, you'll get a person's phone number, address, history, criminal and traffic records, including possible arrests and criminal convictions. You'll also find registered sex offenders in your area. Truthfinder can truly help provide peace of mind when you do these unlimited public record searches by finding out what's available about yourself and those around you. Right now, you can get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just log on to www.truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix. Log on and start accessing information about almost anyone. I want to bring in Philip Klein. He is a personal protection officer and also a security consultant. And at one time, he provided security

for Brian Thompson. Philip, thanks so much for coming on. Tell me if you would, first of all, when were you providing security for Brian Thompson? So between 2005 and 2009, we had Brian three times between that time period. We were working for executives in an oil company. And basically what Mr. Thompson was doing, he was coming in from the outside. And he was coming in from, I believe, Minneapolis. He came into DFW. And we took him from there. We didn't work for his health care company, but we did work for the oil company to which

he was coming in to give a speech in front of the stockholders about the healthcare industry. If you go back and remember, that's when Obamacare was spinning up as fast as it could. So everybody major corporation wise was a little nervous about their healthcare costs. What do you recall about Brian Thompson? Well, I mean, there were two things. little nervous about their health care costs. What do you recall about Brian Thompson? Well, I mean, there were two things. Number one is the first thing we all look for when we have a protectee, which is, are you going to listen to us? You know, are you going to do what we tell you to do and especially don't do what we tell you not to do. So, I mean, it's one of those. The second thing is, you know, I've protected probably over 5,000 people in my 40-year career in one case or another.

You know, our specialization is as corporate executives and politicians. I can tell you, you know when somebody's going to make it big and you know, when they have that gravitas around them and people smile at them and the way they shake hands and the way they present themselves in public all the way from the tie they wear to the shoes they wear. You could always tell that this guy was ahead ahead and beyond uh in his age group at that point I think he was like 38 37 years old if my memory serves me correctly um and uh he was very he had the only way I can tell you is you just had that gravitas he just was good with people and it was uh it was interesting to watch, you know, we don't really watch him.

We're more watching what's going on around him. So, but I do remember that. And the last thing I remember of him was when we left him for the last time, he turned around and looked at me and said, hey, Mr. Klein. I said, yes, sir. He says, says you be careful and I smiled real big and I said you be careful and he kind of laughed a little bit so it is he he could banter with us he was relaxed enough where you know maybe he was satisfied with the people that were around him but he was he was more caring about us and that kind of surprised me because we rarely get that from protectees. You know, they're in a hurry or, you know, they don't really realize what's going on around them or the ballet that it takes to get them from A to B and C to D or in an audience,

work in a rope line, whatever it may be. You know, a lot of our protectees, you know, they're busy going on to the next event or the next situation. So I was very surprised that he took the time. We were in the Sally Port down at DFW, and it was a very interesting exchange. That is interesting. Were you surprised when he was murdered to hear that he wasn't with any type of security that morning, especially when his wife had told NBC News after his murder that he had received some threats? Yeah, we were. Well, I was on duty and I was pulled off a detail that we were working on. And they said, hey, do you remember this guy with healthcare company from Minneapolis? I said, yeah, he's a nice guy. He said, well, he just got shot in New York. I was like, oh, no. And I said, where was his detail? Because I knew

he was at that point, I'd watched him rise the ranks all the way to the top of the company. And my first question was, well, who was his detail leader? Where was his detail? And they kind of looked at me and said, I don't think he had one. So I was more befuddled. Why would he not have a detail? So it was going to be one of two things. One is that he shirked his security. He just said, I don't need it. I don't want it. I'm going to New York. I'll be fine. Leave me alone.

I'm going to intermingle with our stockholders and some of our clients that we have through the healthcare group. Or two, the company didn't provide him security. I don't know the answer to that. They have not released that information, and I'm kind of thinking they're going to keep it close to their vest for litigation purposes, but I really think that it can only be one of those two things. And so I would be kind of surprised to hear him, hear the company or hear his family say, no, we didn't need security. So he shirked it. You know, I just, I have a hard

time believing that, but you know, this is the United States today and there's a lot of surprises around every corner right now. And you've seen an uptick since his murder and CEOs, companies wanting protection for their, we were just talking about this, for their CEOs. Yeah. I will tell you we're a hundred percent. We're not taking any new clients right now because we're at a hundred percent. We became a hundred percent about noon yesterday. Yeah, we are seeing a huge uptick, but what's not helping is twofold again, twofold again. The first fold is these whack jobs out there that are celebrating his death and targeting other CEOs. I mean, that's out there. That's way far out there. They forget he had a wife. They forget he had two kids. They forget that he had colleagues all around him that are mourning right now.

They're upset and they're angry. Second, now we got political officials. AOC chirped in yesterday, which really concerned a lot of us out here that protect political officials. You know, we kind of scratch our heads and say, well, I wonder what how her family would feel if it was her. And so, you know, I think the political discourse in the United States of America is at a fever pitch. We will rate everything on a one to five in our security consult business. And we're at a four around the United States right now. I think it's a matter of time before a copycat emerges and something else happens to some other executive, whether it be television, whether it be health care, whether it be the grocery store owners, whether it be, you know, we can go down the list. I mean, just go down the list that everybody's affected by.

I think a lot of the some of the doors have been open now. And once you go through that door, it's hard to walk back through it. Yeah, it's it's very concerning. Well, Philip Klein, thank you so much for joining us and talking to us about Brian Thompson. back through it. Yeah, it's very concerning. Well, Philip Klein, thank you so much for joining us and talking to us about Brian Thompson. I appreciate it. You're very welcome. My best wishes to everybody up in New York. After Brian Thompson was killed, a clip from Andrew Witte leaked to independent journalist Ken Klippenstein. It has raised some eyebrows. The mission of this company is truly to make sure that we help the system improve

by helping the experience for individuals get better and better. There was nobody who did more to try and advance that mission than Brian Thompson. And there are very few people in the history of the U.S. healthcare industry who had a bigger positive effect on American healthcare than Brian. And we are going to make sure that we not only acknowledge and honor that legacy of Brian, but we will continue it. Our role is a critical role, and we make sure that care is safe, appropriate, and is delivered when people need it. And we guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or for unnecessary care to be delivered in a way which makes the whole system too complex and ultimately unsustainable. So we're going to continue to make that case. We will continue to do the work we do. And I have never been more proud of this company

and our colleagues and what this company does on behalf of people in need across the country. I want to turn now to Ken Klippenstein. He's an independent journalist who's been covering the murder of Brian Thompson. First off, Ken, you decided to publish the manifesto of Luigi Mangione, the entire manifesto, when other outlets wouldn't. selectively from it, to paraphrase from it. But for whatever reason, they weren't willing to actually publish the manifesto, which I thought was in the public interest, clearly in the public interest, because since I've published it, it's garnered some 2 million views. So there's no question that the public was interested in the substance of it beyond these, these, you know, stray quotes and paraphrases. So I published it to my site with the, you know, context being this is the real manifesto because there were a number of false ones circulating. And when the media declines to provide people with the source material on which

their claims are based, that just feeds into all these misconceptions because nobody knows what the real one is that they're talking about. And that was sort of my rationale now the response to it i've gotten some angry uh accusations that you know i'm feeding into copycat attacks and things um i regard that as being you know similar to the claims that violent video games are going to cause kids to you know go shoot up schools i don't think the evidence for it is particularly strong. And so that was sort of my rationale for making that public. You've been getting a lot of information from people inside UnitedHealthcare. Talk to me about what you've been hearing from the people inside the company about Brian Thompson. So Brian Thompson's background turns out to be, like most people's, a complicated one. He was an individual with a variegated backstory, just like most people would have. And unfortunately, that's not the picture that's coming across, I think, in the major press depiction of him, which in the immediate wake of his brutal murder was portrayed you know, portrayed as in sort of North Korean leader

terms, like, you know, that's perfect man who's quote, well-liked. That was terms described by him, I think in the Washington Post. And, you know, he's a family man, blah, blah, blah. And I can sort of understand the impulse to, you know, want to be nice to somebody who had something terrible happen to them and to his family. But that's not the role of journalism. The role of journalism is to, you know, pull facts together. And so in just talking to ordinary rank and file people at the company, I learned about a Justice Department antitrust investigation into the firm, during which time Thompson

sold millions and personally held shares in the company, which led to resentment, at least among the people that I know in the company. And these are not just grunts at the bottom. And this includes management, who had frustration about that. Because at the same time that there's these huge executive C-suite level compensation in salaries at the report, I mean, we're talking tens of millions of dollars and the stock behavior that I was describing before, people at the middle to bottom are making far, far less than that and having to, they think, work under conditions that amount to a lack of adequate support from the company they feel to be able to do their jobs day in and day

out. And so what I saw was a lot of frustration and resentment, just like you're seeing the outpouring on the part of the public in the discourse around this. And that applies to the people that work at the company as well, which is a very different picture, I think, than what we got from the major press. You had told me when we spoke another time that there were some people upset about the use of AI within the company as well. Yeah, that's right. If you look at their earnings calls, they've made this very clear. I'm not suggesting that that's anything that's happening in the shadows. They made very clear that they've made substantial investments

in artificial intelligence. And some of the folks that I've interviewed, I've probably talked to like a dozen people at this point in the company, expressed complaints about what they see as the inefficacy of the software in being able to do their jobs day to day. And also the extraordinary amount of resources that I feel has been invested in this at the same time that they say there haven't been enough investment in other parts of the company that make them able to, you know, address the responsibilities of their job. And so, you know, that's something that you see, I would say across industries, because, you know, in many cases, investment in AI is designed to, you know, push, uh, uh, obsolete labor or, you know,

make certain labor costs unnecessary. So, um, that's not unique to this company. Uh, but within this company, I think there is the sense that, you know, there's so much money being put into it at the same time that, you know, they're having to deal with and process claims and work with patients that they wish they were able to get more human help with. And so that's one dimension to this that I think is also being overlooked. Ken Klippenstein, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

Thank you for having me. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.