From reporter Ken Klippenstein on BlueSky
“UnitedHealthcare wasted no time telling its employees not to talk to the press in the wake of the killing of its CEO Brian Thompson, according to an internal company memo I obtained. Thompson has been accused of profiting off of insider selling before an anti-trust investigation by the Justice Department was publicly revealed — part of the story employees say they wish the media would cover.
“You can tell they really just want us to shut up and not acknowledge it,” a source within the company told me. “Supervisors are afraid to speak up about the corruption for fear of losing our jobs. It’s like we’re being forced to lionize Brian instead of analyze who he was.”
“Thompson took massive pay outs while we at the bottom had to work harder and longer,” one employee told me. “Meanwhile Witty brought in AI to learn from us. So they have the money for AI and massive bonuses, but we’re still using software that is massively behind the industry standard. They’ve been lying to us.”
Resentment for Thompson was widespread at the company, the employee said, citing an internal company announcement about his death that only garnered 28 comments despite being seen by 16,000 employees.
Company financial disclosures show that Thompson’s annual compensation, including bonuses, was $10.2 million. In March, Thompson was sued by a firefighters pension accusing him of selling off $15 million of company stock during a Justice Department antitrust investigation, as I wrote about yesterday. The UnitedHealth Care employee also criticized Thompson’s reported sale of $5.6 million in company stock the same day as news of a ransomware attack plunged the stock’s value by 8 percent.”
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/unitedhealthcare-tells-employees