You have to wade through numerous bullet points in UnitedHealth Group’s first quarter 2023 earnings release to find one particular number that investors and Wall Street financial analysts always look for–how much the company spent buying back shares of its own stock.
Good article on United Health but you miss one important fact about stock buybacks. They enrich executives who are issued stock options whose share dilution is offset by the buybacks which make the options ever more valuable. In their 2018 PROXY STATEMENT, UH said that the CEO's compensation was primarily options of close to $15 million and that his income for that year was around $100 million from exercising options, much of it taxed at capital gains rates and free from payroll taxes. Other executives were treated similarly.
The higher and higher deductibles are an interesting point in this article but don’t implicate UHC as much as our (not) representative government and the narrative surrounding healthcare for all. It’s the captured politicians who opportunistically wrote Obamacare legislation with advise and consent of medical insurance companies and pharma. The redistribution of wealth from paying subscribers, who get less care for their premiums, to those corporations is a prime example of corporate-government collusion that doesn’t benefit people and must be changed by people letting their voices be heard and holding pols accountable.
Thank you for another good article. The Medicare "Advantage" plans just look like a death trap to me. I turn 65 this December. Are there any good tools to help make good decisions on this?
I've been with United Healthcare Medicare Advantage for years and have generally been happy with them. But 2024 is a different story. First, I find that one of my drugs that I have taken for years and is Tier 5, had the monthly co-pay increase from $125 to $1,000. That's a 700% increase from 2023 to 2024. Why?
Also, I was in another city and had an sudden infection. I got an approval from UHC to go to a CVS clinic which in turn insisted that I go to an Emergency Room. I went to the one they recommended. Today I just got a bill for $2,500 for the ER visit which should have been paid for. So I have to fight that battle while I'm still fighting that infection which has still not cleared.
I'm wondering if UHC owns stock in drug companies and hospital groups. If so, they have a conflict of interest because they would want those companies to keep their prices high for more profits. But since UHC doesn't want to pay those high prices, the patients are getting the bills.
When an insurance company wins contracts with states to manage medicare, their revenue will go up. These premiums would have been paid whether or not they were going to UHC or some other company. There are several variables that could have been addressed to better explain and contextualize the dynamics of that growth, in terms of their changes over ten years: number of states managed by UHC, number of Medicare subscribers managed by UHC, total size in the Medicare market, prices for medical care and pharmaceuticals paid by Medicare. Isn’t it the government that sets the payout rates for care? The rise in tax payer revenues for UHC cannot wholly be attributed to UHC exploitive practices. A large increase in revenues of tax payer paid premiums can mean many things including “normal and expected” things if a company is growing their share of the pie or the pie itself is growing.
Good article on United Health but you miss one important fact about stock buybacks. They enrich executives who are issued stock options whose share dilution is offset by the buybacks which make the options ever more valuable. In their 2018 PROXY STATEMENT, UH said that the CEO's compensation was primarily options of close to $15 million and that his income for that year was around $100 million from exercising options, much of it taxed at capital gains rates and free from payroll taxes. Other executives were treated similarly.
The higher and higher deductibles are an interesting point in this article but don’t implicate UHC as much as our (not) representative government and the narrative surrounding healthcare for all. It’s the captured politicians who opportunistically wrote Obamacare legislation with advise and consent of medical insurance companies and pharma. The redistribution of wealth from paying subscribers, who get less care for their premiums, to those corporations is a prime example of corporate-government collusion that doesn’t benefit people and must be changed by people letting their voices be heard and holding pols accountable.
Thank you for another good article. The Medicare "Advantage" plans just look like a death trap to me. I turn 65 this December. Are there any good tools to help make good decisions on this?
I've been with United Healthcare Medicare Advantage for years and have generally been happy with them. But 2024 is a different story. First, I find that one of my drugs that I have taken for years and is Tier 5, had the monthly co-pay increase from $125 to $1,000. That's a 700% increase from 2023 to 2024. Why?
Also, I was in another city and had an sudden infection. I got an approval from UHC to go to a CVS clinic which in turn insisted that I go to an Emergency Room. I went to the one they recommended. Today I just got a bill for $2,500 for the ER visit which should have been paid for. So I have to fight that battle while I'm still fighting that infection which has still not cleared.
I'm wondering if UHC owns stock in drug companies and hospital groups. If so, they have a conflict of interest because they would want those companies to keep their prices high for more profits. But since UHC doesn't want to pay those high prices, the patients are getting the bills.
When an insurance company wins contracts with states to manage medicare, their revenue will go up. These premiums would have been paid whether or not they were going to UHC or some other company. There are several variables that could have been addressed to better explain and contextualize the dynamics of that growth, in terms of their changes over ten years: number of states managed by UHC, number of Medicare subscribers managed by UHC, total size in the Medicare market, prices for medical care and pharmaceuticals paid by Medicare. Isn’t it the government that sets the payout rates for care? The rise in tax payer revenues for UHC cannot wholly be attributed to UHC exploitive practices. A large increase in revenues of tax payer paid premiums can mean many things including “normal and expected” things if a company is growing their share of the pie or the pie itself is growing.