Public anger against America Inc’s top executives goes beyond health insurers

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The phones at corporate security firms in America are ringing off the hook. Security chiefs at major organizations are convening calls to trade notes.

Company websites are being scrubbed of photos of their executives. This is only the beginning of what’s likely to be a major ramping up of corporate security protocols across the country. The shooting of UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson in the middle of midtown Manhattan has boardrooms and C-suites rightly spooked.

But it’s really the level of outrage that’s being directed at the company, not the killer, that has executives on edge. The US public has seized on this moment to air its long list of grievances against what it views as a broken healthcare system. But if corporate America’s directors and top executives are only talking about and investing in security practices, they’re treating the symptom rather than the underlying disease.

The issue goes deeper than just the healthcare industry, encompassing a broader business world that the public increasingly says it distrusts. “Companies need to acknowledge that the root cause of this [anger] is not treating humans with dignity and respect," says Alison Taylor, New York University business school professor and author of Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World. I spent some time this year trying to make sense of why Americans’ faith in big business has seriously eroded over the last few decades.