The apparent targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Anderson—and, perhaps more surprisingly, the sentiments of support for the assassin and general disdain for the healthcare industry at large expressed by the general public—has insurance companies taking extra precautions to protect their leadership teams, including removing their names and pictures from company websites.
404 Media identified several companies that have scrubbed references to their executives, including Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which removed its leadership page that previously listed CEO Kim Keck and 28 other executives. The URL for the leadership page now simply redirects to the company’s “About Us” page. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield recently came under fire for announcing it would place a time limit on how long it would cover the cost of anesthesia during surgeries and medical procedures—a decision it walked back following backlash (though depending on who you ask, the policy wouldn’t have been as bad as it seemed for patients).
While the heat was on Anthem BCBS, it was far from the only company to try to hide its leadership. Twitter user @GASLIGHTER_ spotted similar attempts from nonprofit health insurance organization CareSource, which previously hosted individual pages for its executives including President and CEO Erhardt Preitauer. Attempting to visit those pages now results in a 404 error.
Other companies moving to take down mentions of executives include Medica Healthcare, which took down its “Leaders” page that previously listed President and CEO Lisa Erickson along with a handful of other senior-level executives. The page now redirects to the company’s homepage.
The extent of hiding who is in charge of these firms extends beyond just the company website. Over on Wikipedia, an editor nominated the entry for David Joyner, President and CEO of CVS Health, to be deleted. At the time of publication, Joyner’s entry remains live on Wikipedia.
The effort to remove the page was met with negative feedback from other editors. “This is crazy reaction to the UHC CEO. Are you really that much of a shill?” one editor said in a thread debating the deletion attempt. Another user similarly pushed back, stating, “The article should remain up for the interest of the community. Also it is strange you are nominating it for deletion at a very convenient time when CEOs are trying to hide their digital footprints. I do not believe you are doing this in a genuine manner.”
The decision made by insurance firms to try to remove mentions of their respective CEOs from the web seems like a bit of security theater. Information on who heads these companies is still readily available all over the internet—from company investor relations pages to LinkedIn to business intelligence platforms like ZoomInfo. Unless the plan is to ultimately have these companies run by unnamed people draped in black robes and face coverings and surrounded by security 24/7, axing “about us” pages seems like an ineffective security measure.
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