UnitedHealthcare's New CEO Announcement Draws a Frenzy of Dark Humor

UnitedHealthcare has just promoted one of its C-Suiters to CEO — and the dark humor is already pouring in.

Six weeks after Brian Thompson was gunned down in the streets of Manhattan, UHC announced that it was naming Tim Noel, who formerly ran the insurance company's Medicare and retirement department, to the chief executive role. Almost as soon as that news dropped, social media lit up with gallows humor about the position's deadly history.

"Imagine getting that promotion?" wrote one X-formerly-Twitter user wrote. "I'm thinking Tim Noel may just be the bravest CEO in all of America."

Others were far more pointed in their welcomes to the longtime UHC executive.

"I don't think it's THAT interesting that Tim Noel, new CEO for UnitedHealth, lives in Minneapolis," a Bluesky user quipped. "Minneapolis is where the UnitedHealth headquarters are located, so it just makes sense that he, and other CEOs, would live there, in Minneapolis, which as everyone on earth knows, is in Minnesota!"

On the Eat the Rich subreddit, meanwhile, the vibe was nothing short of feral.

"Looks scrawny," wrote a user whose display image features suspected Thompson assassin Luigi Mangione dressed like a saint. "Needs fattening up like the last one. Then it’ll be good eating!"

Obviously, nobody is actually calling for any harm to Noel, who has worked at UHC since 2007. As with Thompson's murder, these jokes instead highlight the rampant frustration Americans have with the gatekeepers of their healthcare — a bitter resentment that burst to the forefront of the national conversation after Thompson's assassination last month.

That anger was on full display in other posts and comments accusing Noel of being a "serial killer." Given that he likely ran UHC's Medicare department during at least part of the period when the company nearly tripled its post-acute services denial rate from 8.7 to 22.7 percent for Medicare patients, they might not be that far off the money, at least technically speaking.

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