Healthcare: A System Too Complex to Fix, Too Broken to Ignore
Healthcare is an impossibly complicated subject. Countries worldwide choose different systems, and people hold varying opinions. But the underlying foundation remains constant: when someone is sick and cannot fix the problem themselves, they want help.
While few are qualified to design the perfect healthcare system, anyone can recognize when something is broken. Like a car with failed brakes—you don’t need to be a mechanic to know it’s dangerous. Yet in healthcare discussions, politics derail every attempt at honest assessment, with endless arguments about which system is superior while the fundamental problems remain unaddressed.
Sometimes, however, something happens that’s so egregiously obvious it shatters the illusions and exposes the broken pieces of the system that desperately need change.
The Luigi Mangione Case and United Healthcare
Luigi Mangione is currently on trial for the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare. The case has thrust United Healthcare’s practices into the spotlight, revealing a complex web of corporate influence and controversial business practices.
United Health Group, the parent organization, is a $350 billion industry behemoth and substantial political donor. Over recent years, they’ve donated tens of millions to lobbying groups across the political spectrum—a practice known as “buying influence.” Through these donations to firms staffed by ex-government workers who lobby current politicians, the company has become not just a participant in the broken system, but an architect of it.
The Algorithm Scandal
In November 2023, United Healthcare was sued in a Minnesota class action lawsuit for allegedly using a flawed algorithm called “nH Predict” to “prematurely and in bad faith discontinue payment for healthcare services for elderly individuals with serious diseases and injuries.”
According to the lawsuit, the nH Predict AI Model attempts to predict the amount of post-acute care a patient “should” require, pinpointing the precise moment when payment for treatment will be cut off. The model compares a patient’s diagnosis, age, living situation, and physical function to a database of six million patients to predict medical needs and discharge dates.
This practice isn’t unique to United Healthcare:
- July 2023: Cigna was sued for using algorithms to unlawfully deny patient claims
- December 2023: Humana was sued for allegedly using AI programs to prematurely cut funding for rehabilitative care
Real Human Impact
A STAT investigation from November 2023 revealed haunting individual stories behind algorithmic denials. One example: an older woman found paralyzed after a stroke was allotted only 20 days of rehab by the algorithm, when the average for severely impaired stroke patients is almost double that.
The investigation uncovered that this stringent approach was part of a broader effort to reduce expensive nursing home care for frail patients with privatized Medicare plans. The strategy was conceived by former top Medicare officials whose policies became a blueprint for UnitedHealth to reap hundreds of millions annually through payment denials backed by an algorithm.
As healthcare market analyst Spencer Perlman noted: “You can maximize your profitability if you’re able to get people out of expensive care settings as quickly as you possibly can.”
The Timeline of Events
The sequence of events reveals a disturbing pattern:
- December 3, 2024: United Healthcare issued financial guidance citing net earnings targets of roughly $28 per share
- December 4, 2024: CEO Brian Thompson was murdered in New York City at the annual investor conference
- January 16, 2025: United Healthcare reaffirmed their previous earnings estimates
- April 17, 2025: United Healthcare revised their 2025 earnings outlook down to $24-$25 per share
- May 7, 2025: Investors filed a class action lawsuit against United Healthcare
The murder was ideologically motivated. Luigi Mangione had inscribed “Deny, Defend, Depose” on his ammunition—three words referring to the tactical process by which insurance companies avoid paying claims.
The Investor Lawsuit: A Mask-Off Moment
The investor lawsuit filed in May 2025 contains shocking admissions. According to the filing, United Healthcare’s initial financial guidance was “materially false and misleading” because it omitted that the company was “no longer willing (as a result of heightened scrutiny against the Company, as well as open hostility against the Company from large swaths of the general public) to use the aggressive, anti-consumer tactics that it would need to achieve” its earnings targets.
The lawsuit explicitly states that United Healthcare had “for years, engaged in a corporate strategy of denying health coverage in order to boost its profits” and that this “anti-consumer (and at times unlawful) strategy” ultimately resulted in the murder of Brian Thompson.
Most disturbingly, the lawsuit claims that after the murder, when “many Americans openly celebrated his demise, expressed admiration for his accused killer,” the resulting “regulatory and public outrage caused UnitedHealth to change its corporate practices,” leading to decreased profits.
The Fundamental Conflict
This lawsuit represents a complete “mask off” situation. Investors are suing United Healthcare specifically because the company was “NO LONGER WILLING” to continue using allegedly illegal, aggressive, and anti-consumer tactics that resulted in their earnings being substantially decreased.
The timeline reveals the dystopian reality:
- 2023: United Healthcare gets sued for allegedly denying claims with AI algorithms
- 2024: Their CEO is murdered by someone with an ideological vendetta against healthcare companies abusing Americans
- 2025: After downgrading earnings because they stopped predatory practices, investors sue them for not being evil enough
A Broken System Exposed
The structure of healthcare in the United States is fundamentally at odds with the best outcomes for patients. Publicly traded healthcare companies embody this conflict because they earn MORE by caring for people LESS.
While the entire healthcare system involves complex factors—from unhealthy lifestyles to political arguments about different systems—sometimes it’s painfully obvious that the brakes are broken. When profit-driven algorithms programmed to deny as much care as possible make bottom-line decisions about medical care, the system has failed.
This moment shatters the house of mirrors, exposing the healthcare system for what it is. Whether through subtle words in a lawsuit or premeditated crimes with national headlines, the truth emerges: the healthcare system in the United States is fundamentally broken.
We cannot allow profit-driven algorithms to make life-or-death decisions about medical care. That is an unacceptable system, regardless of individual politics. When investors sue a company for stopping predatory practices that inspired vigilante justice, we’ve reached a point where the system’s corruption is undeniable.
