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Comment by JshWright | Hacker News Reader

UHG had $22B in profits last year. They did it in part by having the highest claim denial rate of any major insurer, and things like (allegedly) using an AI based claim evaluation tool with a 90% error rate. UHG also includes other "middleman" companies that are purely extractive, like Optum.

"Profiteering" doesn't seem like that tough a claim to make here...

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Yea... "complicated resource allocation issues" is a really, really charitable way of describing "massively profiting from denial of health care, leading to the suffering and death of one's customers."

I'm actually kind of pleasantly surprised at the raw "FAFO" comments we're seeing. I was truly expecting the mainstream media to circle the wagons and treat this thing like a hero-has-died tragedy, with "respect the dead" and thoughts and prayers and everything, but the public's cynicism actually seems to be overtaking all the corporate whitewashing. This was a truly evil person, and although nobody should call for someone to die, one is allowed to "read an obituary with great pleasure," as the saying goes.

Considering insurance companies are bound by Medical Loss Ratio rules, if they approved all those claims, all it would do is cause everyone's premiums to skyrocket.

Your comment... is not expansive enough.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42334781

>UHG had $22B in profits last year

With revenue of $372B that is a profit margin of 5.9%. Which is frankly terrible.

I suppose ideally they would have 0% margin, but 5.9% is a shitty business to be in. The owners could just buy treasuries and get 4.5% with no work and no risk.

Chillingly, the CEO was on his way to an investor's conference.

Which the rest of the executive team held without him. The same day.

Where are you seeing that the UHG executive team still held their meeting the same day? Everything I've read said they cancelled it.

"Thompson, 50, led UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurer in the U.S. He was on the way to UnitedHealth Group’s investor day set for Wednesday at 8 a.m. ET at the Hilton, the NYPD said. The company canceled that event after the shooting."

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/04/unitedhealth-cancels-investo...

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