UnitedHealth CEO Sparks Uproar After Unbelievable New York Times Op-Ed

Critics are torching a New York Times op-ed Friday by the chief of UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, arguing that the $23.5 million-salaried executive’s message overwhelmingly ignored the failures actively perpetuated by his company in the American health care system.

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty condemned the American public’s gleeful response to the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was assassinated by a masked gunman last week on the streets of New York City just hours before an investor meeting.

In roughly 600 words, he also attempted to deflect his insurance network’s responsibility in the growing inequity in America’s health care system, vaguely pointing to a “patchwork” of failures decades in the making while swearing that his corporate network—which reported $22 billion in profits in 2023 alone, nearly three times the figure reported by CVS, the second-most-profitable health insurance company that year—was consistently fighting to “deliver high-quality care and lower costs.”

But readers weren’t buying it.

Instead, they swarmed the Times with negative feedback, piling on more than 2,500 comments within hours of the article’s publication, temporarily disabling its Comments section. Users shared their own horrible experiences with the health insurance industry, deriding Witty’s vapid analysis as a “self-serving essay” that did nothing to address UnitedHealthcare’s role in a system that prioritizes shareholder profits over successful medical outcomes for its clients.

Federal data from 2022 compiled by the personal finance website ValuePenguin found that UnitedHealthcare far outpaced its competitors when it came to denying coverage, rejecting 32 percent or roughly one in three claims. In 2024, the insurer’s parent group spent more than $5.8 million lobbying Congress on health care–related issues.

Meanwhile, Americans are paying more than ever for health insurance, with costs far outpacing the rate of inflation. A Kaiser Family Foundation report published earlier this year found that the vast majority of U.S. adults are worried about being able to afford a major medical expense, regardless of their financial position.

Tulsi Gabbard is flopping in her meetings to persuade Senate Republicans to back her unpopular nomination as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, according to a report from The Hill published Friday.

“She was proving to be a little shallow, like a House member talking at a hearing and not someone who needs to provide the president’s daily intelligence briefing,” one source familiar with the meetings told The Hill.

It seems that in her exchanges, Gabbard had been all sound, no fury. One Senate Republican, who called Gabbard’s meetings “BS sessions,” said that several Republicans were left wanting more substantive responses.

“I’ve heard that she’s not very well prepared,” the Republican senator said. “I’ve heard not great things.”

A second Senate Republican said she’d elicited “a lot of eyerolls” from senators.

One Senate GOP aide, whose member had met with Gabbard, said her disastrous audiences with Senate Republicans “don’t make it easy” for her to gain the support she needs to be confirmed. “She’s got some work to do if she wants the job. The more she meets with serious people, the more they’ll see there’s a competency deficit.”

The aide noted to The Hill that Gabbard’s “just not educated” on the kind of work involved in the position but said she was “a capable person who could learn quickly.”

Gabbard is “probably more vulnerable than [Pete] Hegseth right now,” another source familiar with the meetings said.

Yet another Senate Republican noted that Gabbard’s issues stemmed from having to walk back her position opposing reauthorization of FISA, a foreign spying tool that she would have to defend as head of U.S. national intelligence.

Gabbard’s bid for the high-ranking role has faced significant criticism, not only because she lacks experience in the intelligence profession but also because of her penchant for defending some of the world’s most violent autocrats—but of course she and Trump have that in common.

Trump transition spokesperson Alexa Henning pushed back on the characterization that Gabbard has been struggling in her meetings on Capitol Hill.

“These cowardly anonymous sources are desperately trying to hold on to power, so they hide behind the media to spread these falsities that directly subvert the will of the American people. President Trump won with a mandate for change from the American people, and that’s one of the reasons he nominated Lt. Col. Gabbard for DNI,” Henning said in a statement.

On Monday, Daniel Penny was acquitted of manslaughter and negligent homicide. On Saturday, he is expected to join President-elect Donald Trump at the Army-Navy college football game as the invited guest of his soon-to-be vice president, JD Vance.

Last year, Penny choked Jordan Neely, a homeless and severely mentally ill fellow passenger, to death on a New York City subway train. As a result of both his actions—Penny claimed he was protecting his fellow passengers, although there is no clear evidence they were in immediate danger—and his subsequent arrest, the 26-year-old former Marine quickly became a folk hero on the American right.

In a post on X on Friday, Vance confirmed reports that Penny had accepted his invitation to join him and Trump. “I’m grateful he accepted my invitation,” Vance wrote, “and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.”

Trump will also reportedly be joined by his scandal-ridden defense secretary pick, Pete Hegseth, as well as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whom Trump is reportedly considering as a backup if Hegseth’s nomination falls through.

Like many on the American right, Vance and DeSantis have embraced Penny. “It was a scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place,” Vance tweeted. DeSantis agreed, writing that “the acquittal of Daniel Penny is clearly the just and correct verdict. I must admit I was skeptical that a jury in New York City would reach a unanimous not guilty verdict, and the jury deserves credit for doing the right thing.”

Trump has been a regular presence at the annual Army-Navy game, which is also known as “The President’s Game” because it is often attended by the commander in chief. Penny’s presence as a guest of honor, meanwhile, upholds a Republican Party tradition of embracing vigilantes.

Kyle Rittenhouse, who in 2020 killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and who successfully insisted in court that he had been acting in self-defense, was feted by the party, receiving job offers from top GOP officials, as well as a standing ovation at a Turning Point USA conference. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, meanwhile, earned a 2020 Republican National Convention speaking spot for brandishing guns at peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters.

Penny currently faces a civil suit brought against him by Jordan Neely’s father, Andre Zachery.

One of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s top attorneys helping him craft America’s public health policy previously tried to push the government to scrap the polio vaccine.

Aaron Siri, a key legal adviser helping Kennedy select federal health officials for the Department of Health and Human Services, in 2022 filed a petition to force the Food and Drug Administration to end the approval and “pause distribution” of 13 vaccines, reported The New York Times. Those included vaccines that have effectively vanquished lethal illnesses from public life, including polio, tetanus, diphtheria, and hepatitis A.

Siri reportedly called for a randomized, double-blind clinical trial of the polio vaccine before allowing the FDA to re-approve it (the polio vaccine has already been subjected to 300 studies that took place before and after its approval in 1955). That would mean giving half of the children involved in the study the actual polio vaccine and providing the other half with a placebo, allowing half of the study participants to unknowingly be exposed to a deadly disease that causes organ failure and paralysis.

In private conversations, Kennedy has expressed that he’d like to see Siri serve as HHS’s general counsel, the agency’s top legal position, according to the Times.

Earlier this week, Trump announced that Kennedy would spend his time at the top of HHS researching an already thoroughly debunked conspiracy that ties vaccine usage to autism rates. (The researcher that sparked the myth with a fraudulent paper lost his medical license and eventually rescinded his opinion. Since then, dozens of studies have proven there’s no correlation between autism and the jab, including one study that surveyed more than 660,000 children over the course of 11 years.)

Kennedy—a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist who doesn’t believe that AIDS is caused by HIV, insists that WiFi causes cancer, and has shared he had a brain-eating worm in his head—has promised to completely reshape America’s approach to public health.

Under Trump’s helm, Kennedy has sworn to remove fluoride from all public water systems—a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association.

During the “plandemic”, Kennedy likened 2020 vaccination efforts to the Nazi testing on “Gypsies and Jews,” referring to the jab as “a pharmaceutical-driven, biosecurity agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare.” In the immediate wake of Trump’s November win, Kennedy swore that he had no intentions of taking vaccines away from the American public, claiming that he was on the side of vaccine “freedom.” But other Trump allies—even prior to Kennedy’s nomination to front the HHS—have envisioned a future where vaccines new and old are stripped from the market, threatening America’s public health in the process.

Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracies aren’t just easily refutable, anti-vaxx hogwash—they’ve caused legitimate, real-world harm. Preceding a deadly measles outbreak on the Pacific islands of Samoa in 2019, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines, sending the nation’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60-70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles—an illness that was declared eliminated by the United States in 2000 thanks to advancements in modern medicine (read: vaccines)—as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of five.

Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

Buried in the massive list of nearly 1,500 people whose criminal sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden Thursday is the name of a Pennsylvania judge who took kickbacks for wrongfully sentencing minors to juvenile detention.

Former Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Conahan, along with another former judge, was accused of shutting down the county’s juvenile detention center and then receiving more than $2 million from for-profit detention facilities as part of a “kids for cash” scheme, according to The Citizens’ Voice.

In 2010, Conahan pleaded guilty to a federal racketeering charge and was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison, according to WNEP. Conahan’s prison time was cut short during the Covid-19 pandemic, when he petitioned for a compassionate release, and he was released to home confinement in 2020.

His stint in home confinement appears to be what qualified him for a commuted sentence.

People online were really not impressed by Conahan’s inclusion in Biden’s massive list.

“Wow. I think Biden’s commuting the sentence of this disgraced Pa judge is a big mistake. I covered this in my Pa media days. He was one of 2 judges receiving $$ to sentence kids to lengthy sentences in a for-profit juvenile prison,” wrote The Washington Post’s Heather Long in a post on X. “He ruined a lot of kids’ lives.”

The Nation’s Joshua A. Cohen couldn’t make sense of Biden’s decision. “What is his problem,” he wrote in a post on X.

“I remember this case. It was a shocking scandal, caused immeasurable harm, and seriously tainted an entire community’s faith in the justice system,” wrote Jose Pagliery of NOTUS in a post on X. “The conviction sought to rebuild that trust. How will these families feel now?”

“These commutation recipients, who were placed on home confinement during the COVID pandemic, have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance,” Biden said in his prepared statement Thursday.

The statement added that Biden had also commuted the sentences of individuals who “would receive lower sentences if charged under today’s laws, policies, and practices.”

Biden executed the largest act of clemency in a single day in modern presidential history, including 39 presidential pardons and 1,499 commuted sentences. Clemency advocates are still pushing for him to extend pardons to some of those facing the death penalty—a group Trump is plotting to execute en masse upon entering office.