Tech giant says reviews responding to employee’s tip-off that led to suspect’s arrest violate its policies.
Google has pulled a flood of bad reviews about the McDonald’s restaurant where police arrested Luigi Mangione, the suspect charged in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Internet users flooded the restaurant with negative reviews after Mangione’s arrest on Monday following a tip-off from a McDonald’s employee at the outlet in Altoona, Pennsylvania, a city of about 40,000 people.
Some of the reviews included references to the healthcare industry, as well as “rats” in the kitchen and “narc” employees, using slang terms for police informants.
“This location has rats in the kitchen that will make you sick and your insurance isn’t going to cover it,” one reviewer wrote.
“More like Narc-donalds … I hope obesity and heart disease are in-network in PA. Deny, defend, depose, diarrhea @ McDonald’s …” one post said, CBS News reported.
The reviews have since been taken down by Google as they violated its terms of use and additional protections have been added to ensure the integrity of the service, according to a Google spokesperson.
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Google policy states that reviews must be based on a person’s genuine experiences at a location.
Including the recent spate of one-star reviews, the restaurant currently has 1,890 reviews with an overall rating of 3.6.
Thompson’s murder has generated an outpouring of commentary online celebrating his death and praising his killer.
Thousands of people have taken to social media to share stories of bad experiences with UnitedHealthcare and other insurers, including accounts of loved ones being denied lifesaving coverage.
UnitedHealthcare has the highest claim denial rate in the US at 32 percent, according to the consumer research site Value Penguin.
“Is now a good time to bring up the fact that UnitedHealthcare billed me $143,000 for life-saving heart surgery that they had pre-approved, and it took me almost 2 years to get their error corrected during which time it cratered my credit score, and it literally took the Washington Post doing a story about my experience to fix it?” Los Angeles resident Dean Peterson wrote on Threads.
“A nation where people ration insulin while UnitedHealthcare posts $324B in revenue isn’t a society. It’s a pressure cooker,” another user wrote on the platform.
Healthcare remains a divisive issue in the US, with 65 percent of Americans rating their coverage as good or excellent but just 28 percent saying the same about healthcare coverage in the country in general, according to a recent Gallup poll.
The US has some of the highest healthcare costs in the world.
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Health expenditures per person in 2022 were $13,493, representing roughly 17.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), according to the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.