A group of investors sued UnitedHealthcare Group on Wednesday, accusing the company of misleading them after the killing of its CEO, Brian Thompson.
The class action lawsuit — filed in the Southern District of New York — accuses the health insurance company of not initially adjusting their 2025 net earning outlook to factor in how Thompson’s killing would affect their operations.
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The group, which is seeking unspecified damages, argued that the public backlash prevented the company from pursuing “the aggressive, anti-consumer tactics that it would need to achieve” its earnings goals.
The group, which is seeking unspecified damages, argued that the public backlash prevented the company from pursuing “the aggressive, anti-consumer tactics that it would need to achieve” its earnings goals.
“As such, the Company was deliberately reckless in doubling down on its previously issued guidance,” the suit reads.
They really just fucking said it…
This economic system is openly hostile to the vast majority of us, the only choice we have is if we participate in it, and that’s not really a choice. Inflation is used to force people into investing, it’s literally there so people don’t just put money under the mattress to save for retirement.
There’s other ways than letting the wealthy do anything and everything they want to everyone else. But it gets harder every day to change it
I strongly suspect this is from some people who own a few shares specifically to file this suit and shed light on the whole system.
Then you are overly optimistic about the state of the American insurance system…
You think the people owning millions of dollars of stock don’t understand that their profits come from denying claims and people dying?
They’ve normalized that and their social circles 100% do not have us in their “in group” because since birth they have never interacted with people who aren’t wealthy.
We are not people to trust fund babies
We usually talk about the in-group/out group split like that with ethnicity or even religion, but it can develop along any line, and for generations has been there a long economic lines.
They would see nothing wrong with making the statement:
the public backlash prevented the company from pursuing “the aggressive, anti-consumer tactics that it would need to achieve” its earnings goals.
For a recent example, look at feudalism, the royalty were separated from commoners due to privilege and for pretty much all of them they started looking at them as a cop.pletely different species with zero innate value.
It only ended because wealth inequality started to decrease leading to the merchant class providing an opportunity for social mobility that rivaled lesser nobility.
But wealth inequality has been going the other way for a while, we’re already seeing the wealthy act like feudal lords again. I know I went on a rant, but c’mon, the rich are 100% out of touch enough in 2025 to make that statement and genuinely not expect anyone to be upset. It takes effort for them to acknowledge we’re also human, so sometimes they just fucking forget.
Absolutely. They specifically avoid using humanizing language in their filing. Then again, legal language also avoids using humanizing language because there really isn’t a standard legal definition for “person”. No, I actually had to look it up and I could not find one. A lawyer wrote about it in a blog post and it turns out it’s troubling to define “person”, for a myriad of reasons. I quote the blog post in question:
Since Roman times, the law has classified everything as either a ‘person’ or a ‘thing’. But the legal term ‘person’ has never meant the same thing as ‘human’ – it is traditionally seen as a formal classification that simply says who (or what) can bear rights. ‘Things’, by contrast, are property – and as such, cannot bear rights.
So, they call us “consumers” instead. “Voters”, “Human Capital”, it’s all the same. But they will never see us as people.
You don’t have to be a millionaires trust fund baby to own stocks or to sue as a shareholder.
But it’s more like the people who lost millions of dollars because of this sued, then a couple people with a handful of shares decided to sue one of the largest fucking companies on the planet to draw Americans attention to the fact their healthcare system sucks in 2025…
Like, just think for a second which is more likely, even though both are technically plausible
Everything about this is incredible.
I’m old. 53. I never gave too much thought to the whole capitalism vs communism vs socialism debate until my early 30’s.
But at my age, it’s become blatantly, obscenely obvious that unregulated, laissez-faire, free market capitalism is evil. That “fiducial duty” to prioritize stranger’s money is more important than human lives.
Putting investors above common, basic decency is abominable, and irredeemable.
I don’t give two fucks about shareholders, or their “investment.”
Adam Smith was the biggest proponent of free markets.
However in “The Wealth of Nations” he makes clear that if all participants cannot choose NOT to participate, it is NOT a free market and should be regulated.
He also proposed regulation, and limits.
He also died 235 years ago…
Like, if you asked any of those “great thinkers” if people 200+ years in the future should still be relying on their opinion and not a single one would agree.
Humanity’s greatest strength is exchanging ideas and building on them, the rate we do so has skyrocketed since then. So much shit has changed that what people said back then should really only be useful on trivia night or when learning history.
If it’s still applicable it means we stagnated, and that’s a bad sign for society.
We should understand the framework and what came before, but under no circumstances looking to them for literal guidance from the ancients type shit. We live in drastically different worlds.
Oh, I’m in agreement.
It’s the reason “The Founders” of the Great American Experiment included the device of Amendments to The Constiution. They knew things would change, and need to be “amended.” Most of them were also rich land owning white men who thought only they deserved to make any important decisions, and a lot of them were slave owners.
I’m in no way fanboying anyone.
Yeah, didn’t mean it personally, just in general it gets old debating centuries old economic plans like we can’t figure out what works.
But amendments was the compromise, lots of the framers wanted to start from scratch every 20 years with a large vote on what makes it in the new.
Agreed.
So, how did he envision his ideal free market in which participants could choose not to participate? How was that supposed to work?
We can’t exactly opt out of capitalism.
Like at my local store. I can choose to buy a bottle of water or I can get water somewhere else.
With healthcare or utilities, for example, you don’t have an option so they cannot be considered free markets and should be regulated.
Clean drinking water, of course, is not something you can choose to be without, so maybe not the best example. Also, fuck Nestle.
You arnt old. And I also feel the same as you. I am becoming anti consumer. I hope as a last chance Gen x get to go out in a blaze. I am becoming more activist. We have been fighters all our lives. Time to use it for good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
It ended all hope. Now everybody’s just screaming into the void.
Prevented them from pursuing anti-consumer tactics? Seriously bleak. I wouldn’t expect anything less from shareholders in a health care insurance company in the United States.
Time to name and shame these shareholders.
fucking ghouls.
So the shareholders are declaring that Thompson’s killing successfully disrupted the company’s “aggressive anti-consumer tactics”.
It’s almost like they’re trying to encourage more of the same.
Fucking disgusting. Shareholders are a plague upon the Earth.
You can thank Milton Friedman. The MBA patron saint.
This could definitely be a lawsuit to draw public attention to UHC’s anti-consumer practices. It’s really all that makes sense.
Wow, just when I thought these ppl couldn’t get more shitty they sue the company for not predicting how much money they would lose from a violent murder of thier employee. Brian this is what you died for, hope you see bud how little people cared about you.
I kind of understand where they are coming from, though. They are accusing the company of not adjusting their projected earnings in the face of a clear negative outlook.
EDIT: The company delivered earnings projections before his death, and then after it they publicly stated their earnings projections would not change. They are accused of not disclosing clear risks to earnings by saying nothing will change.