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In 2025, the seven biggest health insurance conglomerates: Collected almost $1.7 trillion in total revenues, $175 billion more than in 2024; Made more than $54 billion in profits; Covered 10 million fewer people than in 2024; Ramped up their self-dealing by steering more of their health plan enrollees to physician practices, clinics, pharmacy operations and other clinical businesses they now own
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Congress finally hauled the nation’s insurance giants to Capitol Hill to explain why their profits have skyrocketed at taxpayer expense while their approval ratings with the American people have plummeted. The hearings were a necessary first step, but asking CEOs tough questions is a lot easier than passing policy reforms that would diminish their power and ability to capture vast sums of taxpayer dollars — that will take hard work. For the better part of two decades now, Democrats who once wanted…
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With the 2026 midterms approaching, there is an understandable desire on Capitol Hill to “do something.” But lawmakers should resist the temptation to reach for easy answers such as government-imposed price controls. Price controls are not market reforms. They are administrative attempts to override prices rather than address the conditions that make goods and services unaffordable in the first place. History shows that when government tries to control prices instead of expanding supply, the results…
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As a pollster, I have learned to listen closely when voters speak with clarity. On health care costs, voters in battleground congressional districts are speaking louder than ever. They do not like what Democrats have delivered over the past 15 years on health care, and they are increasingly supportive of the reforms being advanced by President Trump and Republicans in Congress. This is a real political shift. In a January survey of 1,000 likely voters in battleground…
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Last week, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means Committees summoned five of the most powerful executives in the American health insurance industry to answer for their outsized roles in the U.S.-health ecosystem. And how their roles are leaving Americans increasingly sicker and poorer while they turn a profit. For starters, let’s take a moment to acknowledge that the hearing was unprecedented. Even in the days leading to the passage of the…
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We hate to say we told you so! In yesterday’s HOTLINE, we predicted that House Democrats would rally behind the health insurance lobby that has gotten rich off of Obamacare. Right on cue, when the CEOs of the big insurers lined up in front of two congressional committees, the Democrats defended the status quo of neverending subsidies, supply restrictions, lack of competition and transparency, and out-of-control health care costs. These are the same pols who…
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“Mr. Hemsley, you know I’m used to following the money, especially when patients are told something is about affordability, and AARP presents itself as an independent non-profit speaking for seniors. But its own financial filings show that UnitedHealth paid AARP over nine billion dollars in a single deal—far more than the AARP brings in from membership dues, and more than four times its annual operating revenue. They also earn royalties tied directly to insurance premiums,…
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If I were still in my role as a Cigna executive, one of my responsibilities would be to prepare CEO David Cordani for his first ever appearance before a Congressional committee tomorrow. When I was the VP of corporate communications, I wrote speeches for the CEO and staffed him for any public-facing appearances. I was also the gatekeeper. Reporters had to go through me to interview anyone at Cigna, and I would rarely allow a reporter…