Health care stocks taking a beating...

It should make every American angry that United healthcare’s stock plunged because the federal govt kept Medicare reimbursement rates steady.

Such a massive conflict of interest to have United healthcare intertwined with Medicare

Good. The people who actual provide care got cut heavily under Biden and reimbursement is less that it was 20 years ago. F#$k'em.

I’m buying UNH

Saw this analysis earlier:

I find United is the best barometer of the overall insurer market and given their size, scale, and overall industry success is the best gauge of what is going on. The insurer recently has faced a lot of headwinds, including a very strongly worded report out of Senator Grassley’s office.

United is made up of United Healthcare and Optum. They break out earnings and it is very helpful to the market as a whole.

United Healthcare saw revenues increase by over 16% or nearly $47B last year. What is fascinating about this is that they only served 415k more people. That means premiums increased about $900 per person covered, or 14.7%. However United made 9.4B or a margin of 2.7%.

What weighed on United was the medical care ratio. In 2025 it was 88.9% versus 85.5% in 2024. This 340 basis point increase is massive. The good news is they believe it will be stable in 2026. However this was likely before the Advance Notice yesterday and therefore I see this number increasing and putting even more pressure on the payer.

On the Optum side the growth came from OptumRx. In 2026 pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) will come under a lot of scrutiny. Optum Rx accounted for 76% of Optum profit. Optum Health lost 278M compared to a profit of $7.8B in 2024, a sign that the physician employer approach may have run its course. Also United has previously shared it is cutting back in MA markets and getting rid of some physician groups.

All in all this paints a very bleak picture for the healthcare conglomerate.