The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has sparked extraordinary public curiosity within the nation’s medical insurance business. A lot of the outcry has centered not on the killing itself however on well being care executives — who’ve develop into symbols of an business seen as too usually inclined to deal with its backside line, not the well being of consumers.
A group of STAT journalists spent the final two years diving deep into how UnitedHealthcare’s mother or father firm, UnitedHealth Group, operates and its influence on the well being of Individuals. On this video, our reporters distill what they’ve realized in regards to the firm and clarify why STAT centered so singularly on it.
This 12 months, within the ongoing collection “Well being Care’s Colossus,” STAT documented how UnitedHealth wielded its unmatched doctor empire to spice up its income and broaden its affect. The 12 months earlier than, within the “Denied by AI” collection, STAT uncovered how UnitedHealth used an unregulated algorithm to override clinicians’ judgments and deny well being care, highlighting the hazards of AI use in drugs.
STAT reporters Casey Ross, Bob Herman, Tara Bannow, and Lizzy Lawrence have reviewed hundreds of pages of paperwork, pored over reams of knowledge, and satisfied dozens of clinicians to talk with them to disclose the untold prices of UnitedHealth’s dominance.
They present how UnitedHealth has turned well being care into an meeting line that treats hundreds of thousands of sufferers as merchandise to be monetized. They usually chronicle how the $5 trillion American well being care system got here to be so damaged.
