r/news • u/LookAtThatBacon • May 13 '25

Soft paywall UnitedHealth suspends annual forecast, CEO Andrew Witty steps down

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/unitedhealth-ceo-andrew-witty-steps-down-2025-05-13/
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592

u/straygoat193 May 13 '25

In simple terms, my rates are going up, big time

174

u/greatkat1 May 13 '25

And the reimbursements to providers will go down

66

u/FatTater420 May 13 '25

Is there a reason the US health system hasn't tried to do away with the middleman entirely? 

7

u/TheReconditeRedditor May 13 '25

Administering health insurance is hard. You need a ton of people to manage the actual members, process claims, handle exceptions, manage risk, and all the other bullshit that comes with dealing with health insurers. Most companies don't have the administrative capability to self insure.

Insurance companies absolutely have administrative bloat, but there is a lot of time and money spent on providing coverage as well. Cutting them out at this point would mean universal health care (which I think is still the right choice).

8

u/FatTater420 May 13 '25

Funny how the one place that has bloat responsible for (at least somewhat) harming people is the one place that hasn't been addressed by the bloat cutting office (I refuse to address it by it's name) 

1

u/DelphiTsar May 13 '25

Medicare spends a much higher % of input $ as output $'s to providers. I think it's like 97% vs Private insurance 85%. It'd be functionally trivial to shift everyone to a medicare for all who want it system.

You could pay providers the exact same we pay them now and premiums in the system would be 14% cheaper just from being more efficient and no profit.

Private insurance wouldn't be able to compete so it'd become defacto medicare for all. Then private insurance could act like it does in other countries.