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Earnings figures released Thursday morning showed the indefatigable nature of health care platform conglomerate UnitedHealth Group, which raked in a record-breaking $400 billion in revenue last year and $34.4 billion in adjusted net profits. Despite being crippled all year by a cyber attack in its Change Healthcare unit that could have destroyed lesser companies, and despite the murder of its insurance division CEO Brian Thompson that triggered an outpouring of revulsion for a company associated with denial of care, UnitedHealth was simply too big to fail in 2024.
In an earnings call, UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty had a message for investors: Setting revenue records wasn’t his company’s focus. It instead was “making high-quality, affordable health care more available to more people while making the health system easier to navigate for patients and providers, positioning us well for growth in 2025.”
Left unsaid was UnitedHealth’s blueprint for dominance in the health care industry: paying an army of 50 lobbyists $5,860,000 in 2024 to shape governance of the industry in its image. A Prospect review of dozens of lobbying disclosures shows that staffers with access to the highest levels of the Democratic and Republican Parties worked around the clock to lobby on bills that could eat into UnitedHealth’s astronomical bottom line.
In 2024 alone, UnitedHealth paid two ex-staffers for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): former chief of staff Cedric Grant, and Sandra Alcala, who managed Jeffries’s member services. Jeffries has stayed silent on the slaying of Thompson, but recently told the rapper Fat Joe in a November interview, “I say often when I’m back home talking to folks about a number of issues … In our community more people die from drive-throughs than drive-bys. We gotta deal with the gun violence problem but when you actually take a step back there are more people dying from lack of access to healthy food, lack of access to health care.”
Michael LaRosa, former spokesperson for Jill Biden, also collected a hefty sum for his work on behalf of UnitedHealth, in addition to top Democratic fundraiser Steve Elmendorf. Former Democratic Congressman Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota lobbies on behalf of UnitedHealth affiliate Medica. On his political career, Pomeroy has written, “I came with President Clinton and left with the Affordable Care Act.”
From the other side of the aisle, UnitedHealth has recruited Kirk Blalock, former special assistant to President George W. Bush; Steve Chartan, former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX); Jane Lucas, former special assistant for legislative affairs for President Donald Trump; Eric Zulkosky, policy adviser for House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA); and Jerr Rosenbaum, former legislative director and general counsel to Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX).
With its ranks of former Hill staffers and White House officials, last year UnitedHealth set its sights on picking apart legislation that would jeopardize its ability to profit off sky-high prescription drug plans and billing services. The number one most lobbied bill by United was the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act. The legislation seeks to force insurers and pharmacy benefit managers to share information about artificially inflated drug prices with consumers. United similarly lobbied on the Modernizing and Ensuring PBM Accountability Act and the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Reform Act. PBM reform, a priority for lawmakers in both parties, was initially slated for the year-end funding bill, but after that bill imploded the reform measures disappeared.
Not all politicians are easily bought and paid for. Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) described UnitedHealth’s price-gouging in his district as “fucking outrageous,” while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) stated that “by buying up every part of our health care system—from the largest insurer in the nation, largest network of physicians, and everything in between—UnitedHealth Group has successfully bypassed competition and funneled billions of dollars to its own subsidiaries.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) had an even darker forecast: “Anger has been building and I would assume it will continue to rise—both anger and fear—because more and more people are feeling the effects of denials and delays in care that they need.”
In addition to lobbying, United also spends big on political donations, with $4.2 million in 2024 alone. And the feeling is mutual. According to Capitol Trades, which tracks U.S. politicians’ stock transactions, members of Congress recorded 24 trades of UnitedHealth stock last year. Among those traders are Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), and Pete Ricketts (R-NE). Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Michael McCaul (R-TX), John James (R-MI), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Mike Kelly (R-PA), and Kevin Hern (R-OK) also listed UnitedHealth on their financial disclosures.
According to a recent report from People’s Action, those bets are likely to pay off should the health care policy outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 come to fruition over the next four years. According to the report, Project 2025’s plan for Medicare Advantage, the privatized version of Medicare that UnitedHealth offers in a co-branded plan with AARP, would double UnitedHealth’s revenue and profit.
By fully privatizing Medicare, the report states that “UnitedHealthcare’s revenue from Medicare Advantage, an estimated $137 billion, could be expected to double to $274 billion annually,” adding that “UnitedHealth Group would likely benefit the most in sheer profit and revenue compared with any other company in America.”
It could also mean an astronomical increase in denial of claims. “UnitedHealthcare would be expected to cover 15.6 million people via its Medicare Advantage plans as the eventual result of Project 2025’s passage with a Trump victory,” the report states. “With 33 percent of recipients experiencing denials annually that would mean 5.2 million people would be denied care annually by UnitedHealthcare alone.”
According to Thursday’s earnings report, UnitedHealth is expecting to boost revenue by 12.5 percent in 2025, to $450 billion.