Doctor and Patients Protest UnitedHealth’s Record Earnings

America’s largest health care company, the UnitedHealth Group, pulled in over $100 billion in revenue in just the fourth quarter of 2024 alone. For the full year, the giant’s insurance division, UnitedHealthcare, reported record revenue of $298.2 billion, the company announced last Thursday.

These staggering revenue totals actually fell below investor expectations. UnitedHealth Group shares, right after the announcement, slipped 6 percent on the New York Stock Exchange.

Meanwhile, just outside that capitalist bastion, victims of our for-profit healthcare system — doctors and patients alike — were braving freezing temperatures to call out the suffering that engineered UnitedHealth’s exorbitant earnings. One of those demonstrators, Jenn Coffey, has been battling complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), a condition so incredibly painful that it’s often called the “suicide disease.”

“UnitedHealthcare would rather leave me in torture than grant me the peace my infusions bring,” says Coffey. “I’m asking for a life worth dignity. I’m left begging for a life worth living.”

Despite Coffey’s pleadings, UnitedHealth has denied her the prior authorization needed to have her critically important treatment adequately covered.

At last week’s protests, several other speakers shared their deeply personal experiences with a healthcare system that far too often treats patients as disposable. 

Dr. Toutou Moussa Diallo, a New York-based researcher and healthcare activist, detailed how insurance denials led to subpar treatment for a broken ankle that only made the initial injury more debilitating. Nephrologist Cheryl Kunis shared the story of a patient who died after UnitedHealthcare refused to cover a PET scan of a malignant neck tumor.

These experiences amount to much more than isolated one-off incidents. The outpouring of anger after last month’s killing of UnitedHealthcare top exec Brian Thompson — anger not at the shooting but at the company Thompson represented — shows just how many Americans are currently suffering under our privatized healthcare system.

The ongoing campaign protesting how UnitedHealth does business began well before Thompson’s headline-grabbing killing. The Care Over Cost mobilization, led by People’s Action, has been organizing rallies protesting America’s biggest private insurers for years.

UnitedHealth has — for good reason — become the most powerful lightning rod for patient and medical staff critiques of how private insurers operate. The company’s gargantuan profits rest on decisions that regularly exploit patients at every opportunity. Just a few snippets from recent news accounts offer a vivid picture about how UnitedHealth goes about making its billions.

• UnitedHealth Group’s pharmacy benefit manager, Optum RX, marked up some cancer treatments by over 1,000 percent, a Federal Trade Commission investigation has found.
• UnitedHealthcare systematically limited access to critical treatments for children with autism to cut costs, ProPublica reports.
• UnitedHealthcare and two other health insurers — to maximize profits — intentionally denied nursing care to patients that Medicare Advantage plans cover, a U.S. Senate investigation found.

And how has the UnitedHealth Group been spending all its ill-gotten gains? One telling stat: UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty pocketed an astonishing $23.5 million in 2023 compensation.

Last week’s protest rally in front of the New York Stock Exchange ended with a set of eminently reasonable demands. The protestors called on UnitedHealthcare to publicly release its claim denial rates, oppose federal tax cuts that would result in Medicaid service reductions, and end the company’s care-denying prior authorization requirements.