Brian Thompson was little known outside the American health insurance industry when he was shot and killed in the early morning hours in Midtown Manhattan in 2024.
Suddenly, his corporate biography became international news: Mr. Thompson’s promotion in 2021 to chief executive of UnitedHealthcare followed more than 20 years of climbing the ranks at the company, one of America’s largest health insurers.
Under Mr. Thompson’s leadership, UnitedHealthcare experienced surging profits, with earnings from operations topping $16 billion in 2023, an increase from $12 billion in 2021. In 2024, Mr. Thompson received $10.2 million in compensation, including $1 million in base pay augmented by cash and stock grants.
He was responsible for enormous growth in the company’s insurance arm, which sells private health plans under Medicare Advantage, a program that through federal funding covers around 70 million Americans, mainly those 65 and older.
Mr. Thompson quietly steered the division through inquiries and criticism from congressional lawmakers and federal regulators who accused it of systematically denying authorization for health care procedures and treatments. He was one of at least four executives named in a lawsuit that accused UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, of hiding a Justice Department antitrust investigation from shareholders while insiders sold stock — including $15 million of Mr. Thompson’s personal shares.
Mr. Thompson was walking into a Midtown Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor day on Dec. 4, 2024, when a masked gunman shot him three times in the back and fled on a Citi Bike.
Friends and colleagues knew Mr. Thompson as B.T. He was described by those closest to him as humble and a hard worker.
He graduated from the University of Iowa and began his career as a certified public accountant at the Minnesota office of the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. From 2004 to 2021, he held several executive positions at UnitedHealthcare.
Steve Nelson, a former chief executive at UnitedHealthcare who worked with Mr. Thompson for nearly a decade, told The New York Times in 2024 that Mr. Thompson “was the smartest guy in the room, without being annoying.” He said Mr. Thompson was an amateur wrestler who liked to challenge colleagues to arm wrestling.
“B.T. was whip-smart and affable — a guy who could grasp the complexities of health care and explain them in simple, relatable terms true to his Iowa upbringing,” Matt Burns, who served as vice president of communications at UnitedHealth Group from 2015 to 2018, said in a tribute to Mr. Thompson on LinkedIn.
Mr. Thompson was a husband and a father of two. Property records showed that he and his wife, Paulette Thompson, had been living in separate homes in suburban Maple Grove, Minn., for several years at the time of the shooting.
Paulette Thompson told NBC that before the shooting, Mr. Thompson had received several threats related to “a lack of coverage.” She told reporters that she did not know details. “I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him,” she said.
The public reacted strongly to Mr. Thompson’s killing, in which Luigi Mangione, who had criticized health insurers’ profit margins, has been charged. While some people condemned the “senseless” violence, others celebrated what they saw as a blow against corporate greed.
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