Insurance coverage Corporations Are Hiding Names of Executives Following Homicide of UnitedHealthcare CEO

The obvious targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Anderson—and, maybe extra surprisingly, the emotions of support for the assassin and general disdain for the healthcare industry at giant expressed by most of the people—has insurance coverage corporations taking further precautions to guard their management groups, together with eradicating their names and footage from firm web sites.

404 Media recognized a number of corporations which have scrubbed references to their executives, together with Anthem Blue Cross Blue Protect, which removed its leadership page that beforehand listed CEO Kim Keck and 28 different executives. The URL for the leadership page now merely redirects to the corporate’s “About Us” web page. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Protect lately got here beneath fireplace for saying it could place a time limit on how lengthy it could cowl the price of anesthesia throughout surgical procedures and medical procedures—a call it walked back following backlash (although depending on who you ask, the coverage wouldn’t have been as unhealthy because it appeared for sufferers).

Whereas the warmth was on Anthem BCBS, it was removed from the one firm to attempt to cover its management. Twitter person @GASLIGHTER_ spotted similar attempts from nonprofit medical insurance group CareSource, which beforehand hosted particular person pages for its executives together with President and CEO Erhardt Preitauer. Trying to go to these pages now results in a 404 error.

Different corporations transferring to take down mentions of executives embrace Medica Healthcare, which took down its “Leaders” page that beforehand listed President and CEO Lisa Erickson together with a handful of different senior-level executives. The page now redirects to the corporate’s homepage.

The extent of hiding who’s answerable for these companies extends past simply the corporate web site. Over on Wikipedia, an editor nominated the entry for David Joyner, President and CEO of CVS Well being, to be deleted. On the time of publication, Joyner’s entry stays reside on Wikipedia.

The trouble to take away the web page was met with negative feedback from other editors. “That is loopy response to the UHC CEO. Are you actually that a lot of a shill?” one editor stated in a thread debating the deletion try. One other person equally pushed again, stating, “The article ought to stay up for the curiosity of the neighborhood. Additionally it’s unusual you’re nominating it for deletion at a really handy time when CEOs try to cover their digital footprints. I don’t imagine you’re doing this in a real method.”

The choice made by insurance coverage companies to attempt to take away mentions of their respective CEOs from the net looks like a little bit of safety theater. Data on who heads these corporations remains to be available all around the web—from firm investor relations pages to LinkedIn to enterprise intelligence platforms like ZoomInfo. Until the plan is to finally have these corporations run by unnamed individuals draped in black robes and face coverings and surrounded by safety 24/7, axing “about us” pages looks like an ineffective safety measure.