As blog readers will know, UnitedHealth is the provider of UC's Medicare Advantage option for retirees. In fact, at one time, there was talk of dropping the other options for Medicare Advantage. But the outlook doesn't look so bright. From the NY Times:
UnitedHealth Group, the giant health care conglomerate, said on Tuesday that it continued to struggle with the higher-than-anticipated costs to provide medical care to patients, reporting a drop in earnings for the quarter that ended June 30... The increased costs were felt across the company’s vast health operations, including one of its most successful businesses, selling private Medicare plans as an alternative to traditional Medicare. UnitedHealth owns the nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, which covers 50 million people.
In the earnings report, released before the stock market opened, UnitedHealth officials offered a detailed look at the company’s rising medical expenses. Executives emphasized the significant gap between what the company had anticipated it would cost to care for the patients enrolled in its plans...The gap was particularly stark in its private Medicare business, called Medicare Advantage. In addition to selling Medicare Advantage plans, UnitedHealth is a large supplier of plans offered by employers to their workers. The company also sells health plans available through the Obamacare insurance markets and Medicaid.
...In discussing the company’s Medicare operations, [a spokesperson] described what he called “a generational pullback in Medicare funding,” largely the result of a crackdown in what regulators viewed as overbilling by the insurers for certain health conditions. In addition to its intention to increase its prices, UnitedHealth said it planned to discontinue some of its plans and would most likely shift to selling plans that give patients a narrower choice of hospitals and doctors as a way of controlling costs...
Last week, the company confirmed the Department of Justice was investigating its Medicare operations...
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/health/unitedhealth-earnings-profits.html.
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