UnitedHealthcare faces backlash and stock price decline

It took six months, countless hours on hold and intervention from state regulators before Sue Cover says she finally resolved an over $1,000 billing dispute with UnitedHealthcare in 2023.

Cover, 46, said she was overbilled for emergency room visits for her and her son, along with a standard ultrasound. While Cover said her family would eventually have been able to pay the sum, she said it would have been a financial strain on them. 

Cover, a San Diego benefits advocate, said she had conversations with UnitedHealthcare that “felt like a circular dance.” Cover said she picked through dense policy language and fielded frequent calls from creditors. She said the experience felt designed to exhaust patients into submission.

“It sometimes took my entire day of just sitting on the phone, being on hold with the hospital or the insurance company,” Cover said. 

Cover’s experience is familiar to many Americans. And it embodies rising public furor toward insurers and in particular UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurer in the U.S., which has become the poster child for problems with the U.S. insurance industry and the nation’s sprawling health-care system. 

The company and other insurers have faced backlash from patients who say they were denied necessary care, providers who say they are buried in red tape and lawmakers who say they are alarmed by its vast influence. 

UnitedHealthcare in a statement said it is working with Cover’s provider to “understand the facts of these claims.” The company said it is “unfortunate that CNBC rushed to publish this story without allowing us and the provider adequate time to review.” CNBC provided the company several days to review Cover’s situation before publication.

Andrew Witty, CEO of UnitedHealthcare’s company, UnitedHealth Group, stepped down earlier this month for what the company called “personal reasons.” Witty had led the company through the thick of public and investor blowback. The insurer also pulled its 2025 earnings guidance this month, partly due to rising medical costs, it said.

UnitedHealth Group is by far the biggest company in the insurance industry by market cap, worth nearly $275 billion. It controls an estimated 15% of the U.S. health insurance market, serving more than 29 million Americans, according to a 2024 report from the American Medical Association. Meanwhile, competitors Elevance Health and CVS Health control an estimated 12% of the market each. 

It’s no surprise that a company with such a wide reach faces public blowback. But the personal and financial sensitivity of health care makes the venom directed at UnitedHealth unique, some experts told CNBC.

Shares of UnitedHealth Group are down about 40% this year following a string of setbacks for the company, despite a temporary reprieve sparked in part by share purchases by company insiders. In the last month alone, UnitedHealth Group has lost nearly $300 billion of its $600 billion market cap following Witty’s exit, the company’s rough first-quarter earnings and a reported criminal probe into possible Medicare fraud.

In a statement about the investigation, UnitedHealth Group said, “We stand by the integrity of our Medicare Advantage program.”

Over the years, UnitedHealthcare and other insurers have also faced numerous patient and shareholder lawsuits and several other government investigations.

UnitedHealth Group is also contending with the fallout from a February 2024 ransomware attack on Change Healthcare, a subsidiary that processes a significant portion of the country’s medical claims.

More recently, UnitedHealthcare became a symbol for outrage toward insurers following the fatal shooting of its CEO, Brian Thompson, in December. Thompson’s death reignited calls to reform what many advocates and lawmakers say is an opaque industry that puts profits above patients.

The problems go deeper than UnitedHealth Group: Insurers are just one piece of what some experts call a broken U.S. health-care system, where many stakeholders, including drugmakers and pharmacy benefit managers, are trying to balance patient care with making money. Still, experts emphasized that insurers’ cost-cutting tactics — from denying claims to charging higher premiums — can delay or block crucial treatment, leave patients with unexpected bills, they say, or in some cases, even mean the difference between life and death.

In a statement, UnitedHealthcare said it is “unfortunate that CNBC appears to be drawing broad conclusions based on a small number of anecdotes.”