Skip to content
ThreadOut
Damian Caraballo MD@813JAFERD · Dec 5, 2024

If you want to see why people are so vicious towards United Healthcare right now, let's do a thread on some of the…

11 tweets1 min read♥ 42.9Koriginal

Summary

United Healthcare, the 8th largest company globally with $389B in revenue, has a documented history of denying 32% of claims (highest among insurers), operating a known-faulty AI denial system with a 90% error rate, and defrauding the federal government of $3.2B. Since the ACA, health insurer stock prices have surged over 800% while out-of-pocket costs for Americans have skyrocketed 67%, contributing to 80% of medical bankruptcies occurring among the insured.

Summarized by ThreadOut AI from the full thread. May miss nuance — read the thread below.

  1. #1

    If you want to see why people are so vicious towards United Healthcare right now, let's do a thread on some of the most egregious health insurer behaviors 🧵

  2. #2

    1) United Healthcare is 8th largest company by revenue in the WORLD. It made $389B last year...$2B less than Apple. It made more money than Exon, Microsoft, Samsung, JPM United Healthcare also denies 32% of its claims...highest among health insurer

  3. #3

    2) United is being sued for making an auto-denier AI program "known by the company to have a 90% error rate, overriding determinations made by the patients' physicians that the expenses were medically necessary." This directly resulted in multiple elderly deaths in midwest

  4. #4

    3) Despite making more money than GM & Ford combined, UNH was found by a govt Watchdog of defrauding Fed govt of $3.2B in extra federal payments for health related assessments.

  5. #5

    4) UNH is most famous for the $35 Ingenix lawsuit in 2000's. In it, they used a database to improperly reimburse MDs for services. The lawsuit used proceeds to start FairHealth

  6. #6

    5 Ingenix was reborn as Optum. Maybe you heard of the Optum CEO during the Ingenix scandal Andy Slavitt. He was an architect of the ACA & became CMS director under Obama.

  7. #7

    6) since Andy Slavitt took over CMS in 2014, $UNH stock is up 790%. Out of pocket expenses health insurance premiums are up 67% since 2008.

  8. #8

    7) 80% of US bankruptcies due to medical bills had health insurance when they got sick. While out of pocket costs have rocketed up,

  9. #9

    8) here's health insurer premiums past 25 years (up 213%) mapped out vs BIG Health insurer stock prices since ACA (up >800%)

  10. #10

    9) so you see, there's a lot of animosity towards the 8th largest company in the world, who's practice is is to deny care & hurt Americans while their stock price has surged >800% since ACA. It's time for @TheJusticeDept to break up Big Insurers

  11. #11

    *Ingenix was $350M lawsuit. nytimes.com/2012/04/24/nyr…