Axios PM

December 05, 2024
Good afternoon. Today's newsletter, edited by Sam Baker, is 391 words, a 1.5-min. read. Thanks to Sheryl Miller for copy editing.
1 big thing: Killer left anti-insurance message

Three words — "deny," "defend" and "depose" — were written on the shell casings of the bullets that killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
- The message is similar to "delay, deny, defend," a reference to the ways insurance companies avoid paying for care.
- 🔎 Police searched an Upper West Side hostel today where they believe the killer might have stayed, The Wall Street Journal reports. But they still don't have a suspect in custody.
🏥 A separate insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, today rolled back a new policy that limited coverage for anesthesia during surgeries, Axios' Nathan Bomey reports.
- Anthem had set a time limit for anesthesia coverage — if a procedure took longer than Anthem thought it should, the insurer wouldn't cover the additional minutes of anesthesia.
- The policy was controversial when it was first announced, but has drawn fresh outrage in the wake of Thompson's murder.
2. 🌊 Tsunami warning called off

More than 5 million Californians were under a tsunami warning for part of this afternoon, following a 7.0-magnitude earthquake off the coast.
- The earthquake struck near the Oregon border, but was felt as far south as San Francisco.
- Officials have called off the tsunami warning that had extended from southern Oregon all the way down to the area near Santa Clara, Calif.
3. Catch me up

- 🏛️ Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy met with lawmakers today to outline their plans to slash the federal government. Go deeper.
- 💊 Scoop: President-elect Trump and RFK Jr. dined yesterday with the chief executives of Pfizer, Eli Lilly and PhRMA. Drugmakers fared well under Trump's first term, but Kennedy is a vocal critic of the industry. More from Axios' Hans Nichols.
- 🤖 OpenAI is launching a new, $200-per-month subscription that will give users unlimited access to the most advanced version of ChatGPT. Go deeper.
4. 🦖1 for the road

The 20-foot-long stegosaurus fossil known as "Apex" will soon be on public display at New York's Museum of Natural History.
- 🦴 Billionaire Ken Griffin paid $44.6 million for the fossil earlier this year, making it the most expensive dinosaur ever sold at auction. He's loaning it to the museum for four years.
- The media got a sneak peek at Apex today. It'll be on public display beginning Sunday.
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