The news: UnitedHealth Group has been engaging in a series of legal tactics to silence some of the company’s loudest critics, according to a recent NYT report.

• The health insurer sued The Guardian last month for defamation over a report alleging that UnitedHealth paid nursing homes to send fewer sick members to the hospital.
• UnitedHealth hired a law firm to force Amazon and Vimeo to remove a docuseries called “Modern Medical Mafia” from their platforms, claiming the video was defamatory. Both tech companies obliged and took the film down.
• UnitedHealth also hired counsel to force a surgeon to take down a viral social media video about having to answer a coverage call from the insurer in the middle of an operation.

How we got here: UnitedHealth expected to garner sympathy and public support when its health insurance division’s CEO Brian Thompson was murdered last December. However, the fatality drew attention to business practices that spark anger among patients, such as denying care.

• Nearly as many consumers place at least moderate blame for Thompson’s murder on insurers’ coverage denials (69%) and company profits (67%) as they do the person who killed him (78%), according to a NORC at the University of Chicago poll.
• Just 19% in that survey said they were extremely or very concerned about further violence targeting health insurance executives or executives in other industries.

Our take: UnitedHealth is more focused on defending its business than acknowledging people’s concerns and offering solutions. This won’t do anything to help its brand reputation—but that probably isn’t a major concern for UnitedHealth right now. Similar to drugmakers, health insurers recognize that healthcare is not like a typical D2C industry, in which consumer experience is the most important measure of success. That’s why UnitedHealth doesn’t have to make wholesale changes to its business model and practices until/if lawmakers require it.

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