Science
UnitedHealth’s Revenues Rise, in First Earnings Report Since CEO’s Killing
UnitedHealth Group reported on Thursday that it earned less than expected this past quarter, citing higher medical costs and pressure on its insurance division at a time when the company is still reeling from the shocking murder of a top executive last month.
Revenues for UnitedHealth Group amounted to $100.8 billion for the fourth quarter, below what analysts had predicted but still 6.8 percent higher than in the same quarter the year before. The company’s full-year revenue for 2024 rose to $400.3 billion. For UnitedHealthcare, the insurance division, full-year revenue increased to $298.2 billion, up 6 percent from 2023.
The results were the company’s first since Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down in front of a Midtown Manhattan hotel.
The murder unleashed public outrage aimed at big health insurers, over lack of access to health care and denials of coverage and insurance claims.
Some shareholders have urged UnitedHealth to issue a report on its practices that “limit or delay access to health care.”
Andrew Witty, UnitedHealth Group’s chief executive, said on a call with analysts on Thursday that frustrations about claims, including delays in receiving care and coverage, were “key areas for us to work hard at to improve.”
A successor to Mr. Thompson has not been named yet. Mr. Witty did not share details about filling the post, nor did he directly address the recent shareholder campaign.
But he and other executives discussed the loss of Mr. Thompson at the top of the call.
“He devoted his time to helping make the health system work better for all of the people we’re privileged to serve,” Mr. Witty said.
UnitedHealth’s results, which disappointed Wall Street, in many ways reflected broader trends and lingering issues for the industry. For several quarters, U.S. health insurers have taken hits to their earnings from high medical expenses and a tightening of government payment policies.
John Rex, the company’s chief financial officer, pointed to cutbacks in government rates in the payment system for Medicare Advantage program, the private insurance arm of the federal coverage for people 65 and over. UnitedHealth has substantial business in these Medicare private plans.
Medicare Advantage performance has declined throughout the industry recently, partly because of regulatory changes meant to prevent overcharging and following increased health spending among some older populations.
Mr. Witty also said there were costs associated with changes in Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for the poor.
The company’s medical cost ratio, a measure of the cost of providing care, came in higher than expected in the most recent quarter, which could add fuel to investors’ concerns that increased costs for delivery of care might linger, said John Boylan, an analyst at Edward Jones, an investment firm.
UnitedHealth, however, kept its full-year guidance for 2025 intact, unaltered by recent pressure. Analysts at Morgan Stanley said in a research note that the company had set “reasonably prudent targets” for this year.
“Overall, our view is that United is well positioned to navigate the evolving health care landscape due to its diversified business model,” Mr. Boylan said.
UnitedHealth’s stock fell 6 percent on Thursday as investors digested the weaker-than-expected results. UnitedHealth’s results, often seen as a bellwether for performance across the industry, pushed down shares of its rivals, including CVS Health, which is the parent of the insurer Aetna.
UnitedHealth Group also owns Optum Rx, one of the country’s largest pharmacy benefit managers, which employers and government programs hire to oversee their prescription-drug benefits.
Optum Rx has faced scrutiny from regulators over concerns that it has raised drug prices, prioritizing its own interests above those of patients, employers and taxpayers. Just this week, the Federal Trade Commission released a report detailing how P.B.M.s could be inflating drug costs.
The agency criticized Optum Rx and two other major benefit managers — CVS Health’s Caremark and Cigna’s Express Scripts — for raising prices on generic drugs for cancer, heart disease and other illnesses as high as 1,000 percent of national average costs.
Mr. Witty, the UnitedHealth Group chief executive, defended Optum’s practices, stressing that 98 percent of the rebates were passed to customers. By 2028, he said, all rebates would be passed on. Drug prices in the United States, Mr. Witty argued, are “de novo set too high relative to any other price in the world,” and shifted the blame to drug companies.
“The P.B.M. acts on behalf of the ultimate payer — the employer, the union, the state,” Mr. Witty told analysts.
Mr. Witty did not address investigations by the Justice Department or lawsuits seeking to block its proposed acquisition of Amedsys, a large home care and hospice company.
Beyond rising medical costs and increasing use of health care services, UnitedHealth executives pointed to the widespread ransomware attack in 2024 that weighed on the company’s full-year profits. The cyberattack forced the shutdown of the company’s sprawling billing and payment system, Change Healthcare. The company has estimated that the data breach of health and privacy information affected more than 100 million people, and said this week that a review of personal information involved in the incident was “substantially complete.”
Luigi Mangione, 26, has been charged with multiple state and federal counts of murder as well as weapons and stalking offenses. He has pleaded not guilty.
UnitedHealth and the police have said that neither he nor his parents had medical insurance through UnitedHealth.
The Pentagon released what it called “new, never-before-seen” files on U.F.O.s on Friday, hailing the step as an example of the commitment of the department, which kicked out reporters earlier this year, to transparency.
“No other president or administration in history has followed through on this level of U.A.P. transparency,” the Pentagon said in a news release, referring to what the Defense Department calls unidentified anomalous phenomena but what most people call U.F.O.s, or unidentified flying objects.
The collection is being “housed,” the release said, at war.gov/ufo. Files will be released on a rolling basis.
The initial files are murky still images that show what could be anything. In one, a cluster of dots appear on the screen. In another, there are some strangely shaped objects.
President Trump on social media framed the release as fulfilling a promise to the public: “Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?””
In 2017 The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had a secret and classified program, which began in 2007, that investigated reports of unidentified flying objects. Since then, there has been a push from lawmakers for the government to declassify its work on U.F.O.s.
Former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, took to social media to deride the release, calling it “‘look at the shiny object’ propaganda” while the administration waged foreign wars.
“Unless they roll out live aliens and test demo UFOs or actually admit what we know this really is then I have way better things to do on this Friday,” she wrote.
new video loaded: Pentagon Releases U.F.O. Files
By Jorge Mitssunaga
May 8, 2026
President Trump has signed off on a plan to fire Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, after a series of clashes over vaping, oversight of the abortion pill and a series of new drug application denials that rattled biotech companies, according to a person briefed on the matter, who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Dr. Makary had a high profile for an F.D.A. commissioner, appearing frequently on television and podcasts to sell the work he was doing at the agency on improving the food supply, speeding up some drug approvals and trying to restore agency morale after thousands of staff members left.
He tried to walk the tightrope between the business-friendly Make America Great Again movement, pledging to get rid of regulations that slow down innovation and to attract more drug trials to the United States. He was an ally of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make American Healthy Again supporters, voicing the skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry and authorizing natural food dyes.
Ultimately, Dr. Makary’s efforts were not enough to overcome the grievances of a growing band of enemies focused on selling tobacco, opposing abortion and seeing biotech therapies authorized.
Mr. Trump’s decision to dismiss him was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The decision could still change, given Mr. Trump’s propensity to change his mind Dr. Makary has also proven persuasive with Mr. Trump in beating back previous efforts to oust him.
Leaving the White House Friday evening, Mr. Trump dismissed the idea that Dr. Makary would be fired.
“I’ve been reading about it, but I know nothing about it,” he said.
The White House has pressured Dr. Makary for months to authorize flavored e-cigarettes, according to a person close to the conversations. The approvals were a top wish of major tobacco companies that have been top donors to Mr. Trump. In March, the F.D.A. issued a memo saying that it would only authorize e-cigarettes in flavors such as mint, tea and spices. The memo said the fruit and candy flavors would be unlikely to pass muster, given their appeal to young people.
Pressure continued, though, and on Tuesday the F.D.A. authorized blueberry and mango flavored e-cigarettes by Glas, a small company based in Los Angeles.
Abortion foes including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America have continued to turn up the heat on Dr. Makary, reiterating their call for his firing on Thursday. The group’s leaders and others view Dr. Makary as dragging his feet on a safety review of the abortion pill mifepristone, which they viewed as a way to highlight what they believe are dangers of the drug. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who also opposes abortion rights, amplified criticism of Dr. Makary on social media as well.
The administration has been under pressure from conservatives to tighten regulations on the prescribing and dispensing of mifepristone. The Supreme Court is reviewing a federal appeals court ruling that temporarily blocked abortion providers from prescribing the drug through telemedicine and sending it to patients by mail.
Biotech companies and their investors have also raised alarms with the White House about agency decisions to reject a series of treatments for rare diseases. The F.D.A. typically turns down about 20 percent of the applications it receives for drug approvals from companies.
Dr. Makary has been aggressive in defending the decisions, which he said came from career scientists who found the medications ineffective.
Dr. Makary also had to contend with a health secretary who seemed to view the F.D.A. as an avenue for getting his favored products authorized, exemplified by Mr. Kennedy’s social media post saying that the agency would end its “war on” stem cell treatments, peptides and raw milk. Mr. Kennedy pushed the F.D.A. to reverse a 2023 ban and allow the use of a number of peptides, unproven compounds purported to offer anti-aging or muscle-recovery benefits.
Before leading the F.D.A., Dr. Makary was a cancer surgeon and health policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He was also the author of several books about the health care system.
Some of Dr. Makary’s more popular moves included encouraging broader use of hormone replacement products for women and lifting the F.D.A.’s warnings on them. He helped speed some promising drugs to market, including a pancreatic cancer therapy and the pill form of the popular GLP-1 weight loss drugs.
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