Health Insurers’ Profits Are Reaching New Heights
The top five health insurers have raked in over $371 billion in profits since ACA passed. Over 40% of that went to the parent company of CEO Brian Thompson’s UnitedHealthcare, UnitedHealth Group — which denies nearly one in three claims from its policyholders.
Since the Affordable Care Act’s passage, the top five health insurers’ annual profits have jumped 230 percent, which includes UnitedHealth Group. (Tiffany Hagler-Geard / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
America’s largest health insurers have raked in more than $371 billion in profits since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to financial data reviewed by the Lever. More than 40 percent of that net income went to UnitedHealth Group, whose annual profits have skyrocketed by nearly 400 percent as the company now reportedly denies nearly one in three medical claims from its policyholders.
Insurers garnered these profits as the average American families’ premiums have risen to nearly $26,000 a year. In all, since the ACA was passed in 2010, more than $9 trillion of revenue has flowed to the country’s largest health insurance companies, which include UnitedHealth Group; Cigna; Kaiser Permanente; Elevance Health, the parent company of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield; and CVS Health, which acquired Aetna in 2018.
The financial data comes from the companies’ annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other disclosure forms.
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