UnitedHealth Executive's Killing Is Crisis-Control Test for Insurer's CEO

Since the assassination of his top lieutenant Brian Thompson on Dec. 4, Andrew Witty has been keeping long, difficult hours at the Minnesota headquarters of the giant company he runs, UnitedHealth Group.

- KEVIN T. DUGAN, Peter Loftus

Witty has been telling company executives during meetings and rank-and-file employees in videos that the work they do is important, lifesaving and deeply appreciated following the killing of Thompson, who had run the company's health-insurance division.

More quietly, Witty is telling executives that the company is expecting to hit financial records by the end of the year.

It is up to Witty, a knighted former pharmaceutical chief who went on to a rare second act running the even larger and more-powerful healthcare conglomerate that is UnitedHealth, to steer through one of the worst corporate crises imaginable: the targeted killing of one of its own executives.

Witty must ease the concerns of his company's 440,000 anxious employees following Thompson's assassination and keep its complex business humming while also responding to a wave of outrage over health-insurance practices since the killing in Midtown Manhattan.

Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing, is charged with murder after being arrested with a notebook expressing hostility toward the healthcare industry, turning the case into a cause célèbre.

Witty has had decades navigating unusual crises hacks, sprawling frauds, even an incriminating sex tape of a top lieutenant - in a storied career.

Now on the line is the future of UnitedHealth, the standing of the wider health-insurance industry and the personal reputation that Witty has fostered for years as a healthcare reformer.

"The environment we find ourselves in is a complex one, not one that was ever designed by anybody," Witty said in a video, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, that UnitedHealth sent to employees on Dec. 23.

UnitedHealth, which didn't make Witty available for this article, said he has worked throughout his career to help people around the world gain access to high-quality, affordable healthcare and to transform health systems.

Monitoring threats