Amazon’s streaming service pulled a documentary critical of pharmacy benefit managers after receiving a legal threat from UnitedHealth Group, The New York Times reported.
The docuseries, “Modern Medical Mafia,” accuses PBMs of acting as an organized “crime ring” that has patients “choosing between life or death with mafia tactics due to greed,” according to a description on YouTube. One of the largest PBMs, OptumRX, is a UnitedHealth subsidiary.
The documentary “spreads a vociferous and false screed in a thinly-veiled call to violence for anyone who is dissatisfied with the American healthcare system,” a lawyer for UnitedHealth wrote to Amazon in May, according to The Times. “Recent history and [UnitedHealthcare CEO] Brian Thompson’s murder demonstrate the devastating and irreversible consequences of ginning up such hatred with false claims designed to inspire violence.”
A few days later, Amazon Prime Video removed the documentary, which only had a few hundred views, as did streaming service Vimeo, according to the July 12 story. The docuseries remains on YouTube.
An Amazon spokesperson told The Times that the film’s distributor asked Prime Video to remove the series after Amazon flagged its “low video quality.”
