The logo for UnitedHealth Group appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on April 17, 2025. (Richard Drew/The Associated Press)
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It‘s been a rough year or so for UnitedHealth Group.
Since Brian Thompson, the chief executive of the company’s insurance arm UnitedHealthcare, was killed on Dec. 4, shares have fallen roughly 38%.
The woes, however, go far beyond sluggish financial performance.
Stephen Hemsley, the chairman of the company’s board of directors, said in a statement at the time: “Andrew Witty combines an extraordinary breadth and depth of health care experience, sophisticated strategic thinking and outstanding leadership development skills.”
The timing of the executive transition puzzled analysts, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported, as Witty had only recently returned to the company after leaving for months to help the World Health Organization develop and distribute COVID-19 vaccines.
Yet by the time the calendar year ended, UnitedHealth Group had posted an annual profit of $17.3 billion on $287.6 billion in revenue.
Just mentioning the expensive drugs became shorthand to explain the escalation of health care cost trends that dominated the final two years of Witty‘s tenure.
“Innovation that is not affordable is not innovative,” he said at the time. “I don’t think anybody at UnitedHealth Group has any argument with the prospects and possibility for the future of this drug class. … But, ultimately, it has to be affordable.”
For full-year 2023, the company saw an adjusted profit of $22.38 billion on revenue of $371.6 billion.
The troubles started when UnitedHealth Group disclosed that its Change Healthcare business in Tennessee was the victim of a major cyberattack.
The company initially said the incident was perpetrated by a “nation-state associated cyber security threat actor,” but it later clarified the attack was attributed to “a cybercrime threat actor who has represented itself to us as ALPHV/Blackcat.”
Lawmakers slammed the group’s cybersecurity during a Capitol Hill hearing, questioning whether the company had become too big. Witty apologized at the hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, admitting the hackers accessed a portal lacking multifactor authentication protections.
A few months later, about 50 people gathered to protests PBMs outside the company’s Optum headquarters building.
In October 2024, a federal watchdog report asserted that UnitedHealth Group stood out from its peers in using questionable diagnosis data to boost Medicare Advantage payments from the government — an allegation that dovetailed with investigative reporting from national journalism outposts that year.
A hooded gunman waited outside a Manhattan hotel for about five minutes before shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The word “deny” was allegedly scrawled on one of the bullet casings found at the scene.
In a video message to employees, Witty called the murder of Brian Thompson, who led the company’s insurance arm, “immeasurably sad” and “profoundly shocking.”
“I’d like to ask you all to look out for yourselves,” Witty said in a video message. “This is a moment where, in among everything else, we’re reminded of the fragility of families, of individuals and the importance that that really represents.”
Luigi Mangione was soon arrested for the killing and last month pled not guilty to a federal murder charge after a massive manhunt.
The company cut its earnings for the year due to a surprise jump in medical costs, causing a stock price plummet that erased more than $120 billion in market value.
The Star Tribune reported it was the largest single-day drop in UnitedHealth’s stock price since the 1990s. Witty called the company’s performance “unusual and unacceptable.”
“We must and will execute to better anticipate and address these factors,” Witty said during a call with investors.
In an abrupt change, the company said Tuesday morning that Witty is leaving his post for personal reasons, but will remain as a senior advisor. Board chairman and former CEO Stephen Helmsley has become CEO again. Executives tell investors the company expects to return to growth in 2026.
“Steve Hemsley brings a combination of strategic vision and deep operational focus that are highly valuable to our company,” said Michele Hooper, the lead independent director of UnitedHealth Group, in a statement.
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