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John Oliver on UnitedHealth Group: ‘Algorithmically driven, ruthless arbiters of who lives and who dies’ (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/health@lemmy.world
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“…it’s not just that Luigi was handsome. One reason many found it hard to completely condemn the murder is that so many Americans are furious with UnitedHealthcare.”

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[–] 30 points 1 month ago (1 child)

UnitedHealth Group brought in $447bn in 2025, making it the third-highest company by revenue in the US behind Walmart and Amazon and ahead of Apple.

Money made entirely from shaving off care that people need. It’s not all necessarily from denying someone a massively (and wrongly) expensive treatment either. Each little uptick in copay, coinsurance, etc., be it even $5, goes into that number, and they’ll keep doing it.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 month ago

    As Oliver covered in the episode, they also make money hand-over-fist by encouraging ‘upcoding’ to extract maximum dollars from the government. So they’re simultaneously denying coverage (to save money) which is harming and killing people, while charging exorbitant prices to the consumers (to make money), while also stealing taxes allocated to help those people (to make even more money). It’s a triple-whammy.

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