Aggressive Medicare Strategy or Just Capitalism, Senator?
Bloomberg's headline reports a Senate investigation found UnitedHealth Group Inc. employed “aggressive strategies” to inflate diagnoses and boost payments from private Medicare plans. They call it 'aggressive,' as if pursuing maximum profit from a government-funded healthcare system is a novel concept for a multi-billion dollar corporation. One might wonder why a system allowing such 'strategies'
is still lauded as efficient. This isn't an anomaly, it's the feature. UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty, who conveniently just stepped down from the role of CEO in 2024 (though he remains executive chairman after a short CEO stint), oversaw this playbook. It’s a familiar dance: health insurers extract every possible dollar from public funds, then lawmakers feign shock in a report. Perhaps instead of
moralizing reports, we should question the fundamental structure that incentives such 'aggression' from organizations profiting enormously—UnitedHealth reporting $22.4 billion in profit in 2023 alone—from the public's right to healthcare.