Insurance stocks down since UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson killing

Major insurance stocks have fallen greater than 6% since their closing prices last Tuesday, the day before the deadly shooting of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealth Group‘s insurance arm, in midtown Manhattan. 

That features UnitedHealth, CVS Health and Cigna, which operate three of the nation’s largest private health insurers. Thompson, 50, led UnitedHealthcare, the biggest private payer of medical health insurance advantages within the U.S. 

Luigi Mangione, 26, is accused of fatally shooting Thompson outside the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan early Wednesday last week, because the CEO headed to UnitedHealth Group’s investor day. Investigators have said Mangione was a critic of the health-care industry, a view some Americans sympathized with online in the times after Thompson’s death.

The stock performance of the businesses appears to be in response to the “renewed rhetoric” condemning insurers’ business models, where they “wind up incredibly profitable on the expense of some patients at different points of the yr,” Jared Holz, Mizuho’s health-care equity strategist, said in an interview.

He noted that it is just not a latest theme within the industry, which many Americans blame for his or her spiraling health-care costs.

“I feel the response investors have had is, ‘do we wish to own this category of stocks if there’s going to be this now renewed negative deal with the industry?'” Holz said. 

UnitedHealthcare, just like other big insurers, has faced lawsuits and criticism from regulators, lawmakers and patients alike over allegedly denying claims to maximise their profits. Americans have criticized insurance firms over denied coverage for services or treatments, unexpected bills, hefty out-of-pocket costs and the dizzying complexity of navigating coverage, amongst other issues.

While backlash to the industry has mounted because the shooting, Holz said the negative stock response will likely wind up being “fairly short-lived.” He added that he doesn’t expect insurance firms to make material changes to their policies in response to the killing. 

“Do I feel corporations do anything proactively different on the back of this? No,” Holz said. 

Recent York prosecutors charged Mangione with second-degree murder, criminal possession of a loaded gun and other crimes Monday night, hours after his arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The Recent York charges followed Mangione’s first court appearance in Pennsylvania on separate gun and forgery counts.

Mangione, a private-school valedictorian and Ivy League graduate who belongs to an influential Maryland family, was held without bail after his arraignment Monday evening.

In a court hearing Tuesday afternoon, Mangione refused to waive his right to challenge his extradition to Recent York City. A judge denied Mangione’s bail, sending him back to a Pennsylvania prison in the meanwhile.

On the time of his arrest, Mangione was carrying handwritten pages that criticized the U.S. health-care industry and singled out UnitedHealthcare, law enforcement officials told NBC News.

“I do apologize for any strife or traumas however it needed to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming,” Mangione wrote, NBC reported.

Authorities are still investigating the motive for the shooting, which can “come out as this investigation continues to unfold over the subsequent weeks and months,” Recent York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told NBC’s “TODAY” show on Tuesday. But she noted that Mangione’s note had “anti-corporatist sentiment, a variety of issues with the health care industry.”