Behind The Blog: Healthcare And Its Stakeholders

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we talk about health insurance.

EMANUEL: Publicly traded companies have to disclose who their CEO is and what they are getting paid to the SEC because as publicly traded companies they owe shareholders and potential shareholders a degree of transparency about the company they are investing in and doing business with. 

UnitedHealth Group, whose CEO was gunned down in the street this week, is a publicly traded company, as is the parent company for health insurer Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which, as Sam reported last night, is one of a number of health insurance companies that took down the “leadership” pages from their sites, naming and showing their CEOs and other top executives. 

I’m not going to jump into the fray here about the morality of murdering a CEO of a company that greedily makes life and death decisions that haunt countless of people and families for the rest of their lives other than to note that clearly a large segment of the public has responded to it with a certain sense of righteous glee. What I think is interesting is the decision of these companies to now try and hide their leadership teams. Obviously, this is a pragmatic choice of whatever person or team is now responsible for their safety, but it also highlights one of the many hypocrisies that I believe makes people feel okay celebrating someone’s murder.