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Scott Becker - UnitedHealthcare Gets Crushed 1-28-26 · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

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  This is where health care leadership comes together.
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  Becker's sixteenth annual meeting brings more than 3,500
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  hospital and health system executives and nearly 800
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  speakers to Chicago April.
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  This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas
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  Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former president George
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  w Bush. For the agenda and event details,
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  visit beckershospitalreview.com
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  and click on the events tab in the
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  upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you
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  in Chicago.
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  This is Scott Becker with the Beckers HealthCare
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  podcast.
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  This is a short episode about UnitedHealthcare,
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  and the title of this will be UnitedHealthcare
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  gets crushed.
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  And we're just gonna go through seven or
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  eight quick points related to UnitedHealthcare.
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  So on Tuesday, the twenty seventh,
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  the stock of UnitedHealthcare,
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  or towards the very end of the day
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  now, dropped by about 20% for the day.
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  It's also down about 48%
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  over the last fifty two weeks. So so,
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  really, there's a good, bad, and ugly here
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  story.
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  First, earnings for last year and revenues for
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  last year came out pretty well.
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  Earnings per share for the fourth quarter ended
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  up above expectations.
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  They end up in revenues for the year
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  at 448,000,000,000,
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  making United about the third or fourth largest
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  company by revenues in The United States. So
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  that's all good news.
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  The the bad news is they're projecting
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  lower revenues
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  next year. This is about the first time
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  in about forty years, four decades, that they
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  projected
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  reduced revenues versus growth in revenues. That's bad
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  news. The Optum Health business also struggled.
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  They're they're also expecting a contraction
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  in Medicare and Medicaid membership enrollment.
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  And finally, the medical loss ratio has skied
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  to about 89%.
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  Now I've been watching medical loss ratios for
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  the last ten years or so, not before
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  that. I don't remember really it being top
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  of mind. Remember during COVID and before that,
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  medical loss ratio has been in the eighty
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  two, eighty five percent range. When they got
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  to eighty five, eighty six percent, the health
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  insurance started to have more trouble.
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  Now when you see United last year at
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  eighty nine point one percent, those are really
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  challenging numbers for insurers. Now as a health
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  care consumer,
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  as a health care operator,
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  we think medical cost ratio should be pretty
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  high because more dollars should be devoted towards
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  health care than administrative costs. But either way,
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  from a health insurance perspective, these are challenging
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  numbers. Now the thing I'll also point out
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  about today's earnings release and what's happening with
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  United is it's not unique to United.
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  The other big insurers are also taking it
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  on the chin today, both the Medicaid insurers
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  and the Medicare insurers and the commercial insurers,
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  everybody's taking it on the chin. Humana's also
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  down about 19% today. Thank you for listening
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  to this episode of the Becker's Healthcare podcast.
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  Thank you very much for joining us.