More than 150 people went on a protest in July in front of the UnitedHealth Group Inc. offices in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Their problem was that the health insurance company had turned down a lot of cases.
People who are covered are very frustrated about this problem, which is made worse by the fact that insurance companies aren’t open about their denial rates and aren’t required to by government rules.
Brian Thompson was the CEO of the company’s UnitedHealthcare health insurance business. No one knows why he was killed, but words found on shell casings found at the scene of the shooting have led to one theory.
Police say that the words “deny,” “depose,” and “defend” were written on the bullets. The media thinks that the words were a reference to the 2010 book “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It,” which was about how insurance companies try to avoid paying health insurance claims.
Eleven people were arrested this summer during a protest outside of UnitedHealth’s UNH -4.20% offices. The goal was to bring attention to the problem.
In an April letter to UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty, the People’s Action Institute, which organized the protest, said, “UnitedHealth Group’s profiteering by denying care is a disgrace. It leaves people across Minnesota and the whole United States without the care they desperately need.”
In a statement at the time, UnitedHealth said that its executives had met with the protesters and “resolved the member-specific concerns raised by this group and remain open to a constructive dialogue about ensuring access to high-quality, affordable care.”
If Thompson was shot and killed, the People’s Action Institute called it “shocking” and called for a “productive, nonviolent, democratic way to make change on this problem.”
“We know there is a great deal of gun violence in the United States.” There is also a crisis of denials of care by private health-insurance corporations including UnitedHealth,” the statement read. “These two crises need to end.” Both need to be dealt with by our leaders in politics.
People vented their anger on social media
But the anger isn’t just coming from political groups. Reading through the comments on Thompson’s LinkedIn page showed how common the anger is over claim denials.
“I have stage 4 lung cancer that has spread.” We just left UHC because my medications were being turned down so many times. Each month a new reason is given for not letting them in. As of today, we’ve spent well over $20,000, which is more than our annual maximum out of pocket. This was Lisa Galeski’s reaction to Thompson’s post about making health care more affordable.
A call left for UnitedHealth representatives wasn’t answered right away.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, one thing that makes people angry is that it’s not clear how many claims health insurers reject. The Affordable Care Act said that insurers had to tell people how often they reject claims, but that rule has never been put into action. Because of this, a hodgepodge of inaccurate and missing data has been left behind.
There are signs that the number of health insurance claims being turned down is usually going up. A new study from Experian Health shows that between 2022 and 2024, the number of claims denied by payers went up at three out of every four healthcare providers.
Soon after Thompson was shot, a chart on social media that said UnitedHealth had the most claim rejections of all the big insurance companies went viral. The data that was being used only had to do with services that the insurance company offered in two states through the Affordable Care Act exchanges.
In the meantime, UnitedHealth’s income has grown over the past few years, mostly because insurance rates have gone up.
Securities records show that UnitedHealth made a net profit of $8.66 billion on sales of $299 billion in the first nine months of 2024. A lot of the money—$232 billion—came from insurance payments.
Securities records show that this is more than $100 billion more in sales than the company made during the same time period four years ago, when it made $192 billion.
Companiesmarketcap.com says that UnitedHealth is the 14th biggest company in the United States, with a market capitalization of $544 billion.
The company doesn’t give away a lot of information about insurance claims in its public financial documents, but it does say that “substantially all” claims for medical care are “settled within 12 months” and that 90% of claims are “settled within 90 days from the date of service.”
