MPU: Your Health Insurance Premiums Are Going Up. Here’s Who’s Profiting.
"If we keep letting UnitedHealth, Cigna and CVS / Aetna write the rules, your costs will keep climbing and your choices will keep shrinking."
More Perfect Union has just posted a video breaking down a truth that Big Insurance hopes you never hear: rising “health care costs” are really rising health insurance profits.
As I explained in the video, UnitedHealth, Cigna, CVS/Aetna are part of a cartel of corporate conglomerates that have built a business model that relies on overpayments in Medicare Advantage, shrinking doctor networks and a sprawling web of vertically integrated subsidiaries that vacuum up our premiums, deductibles and tax dollars — and turn them into shareholder returns as Wall Street relentlessly demands.
Here’s a bit of what I said:
“Your premiums, deductibles and pharmacy bills are all going up. We’re told it’s because medical costs are rising, but the bigger story is who’s capturing the money. In just three months, UnitedHealth Group made $4.3 billion in profits on revenues of $113 billion.
Over the past five years, the cost of a family premium has increased 26%. This year, the average cost of a family policy was almost $27,000.
Just about everybody with private insurance will be paying a lot more than that next year, regardless of whether you get it from your employer or buy it on your own. That’s because UnitedHealth and other big insurance companies cannot control rising health care costs.
In fact, insurance companies benefit from medical inflation. They just jack up their premiums enough to cover the additional cost and guarantee them a tidy profit.”
The video points out the real drivers of cost growth — from UnitedHealth’s nearly 2,700 acquisitions to Medicare Advantage overpayments that funnel billions from taxpayers into corporate profits.
If you haven’t watched it yet, I hope you will and share it with everybody else you know. It’s clear that Congress must pass common sense guardrails to stop Big Insurance from writing the rules of American health care and squeezing Americans.
We must take the terms, Medicare and advantage out of parts C plans. Part c plans are commercial
/private for -profit health insurance. Another note is that part C plans will be given a raise of 5.06% in 2026. The private for profit health insurance industry lobbied for more. Of course, this raise is paid by taxpayers.
Wendall, this article and other similar ones regarding UHC, Cigna, CVS/Aetna and Elevance all point to the same problem, THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT! It was NEVER intended to reduce the cost of health insurance and healthcare in general. It was designed as a pathway to your preferred solution of "Medicare for All". Meanwhile, all Americans that only have individual medical insurance to rely on have been paying the price. The original Advanced Premium Tax Credit (aka premium subsidy) and the "Enhanced" subsidy provided during COVID just add to the problem. The more you subsidize something the more expensive it becomes. Think college tuition.
The ACA should be fully repealed and replaced. No, this doesn't mean we take away guarantee issue, allow pricing differences between those who are sick and healthy, or the ability to rider out certain medical conditions. This can all be preserved. We need to eliminate all the other crap. There is a better way to do this and the ACA was never the solution!