By Chris Faddis
March 12, 2025

The Era of Healthcare Price Gouging Must End

Patients across the nation have reason to hope for a healthier future, one at a lower, more equitable and more transparent price-point to boot.  

Mere days after the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into UnitedHealth Group’s ethically problematic billing practices, the Trump administration issued an executive order to empower “patients with clear, accurate, and actionable healthcare pricing information.” 

In conjunction, these actions are set to revitalize American healthcare and put patients first like never before. 

UnitedHealth’s billing practice is just one symptom of an oversized, bureaucratic healthcare system that has put profits over patient health for far too long. The company has been diagnosing patients in such a way that it triggers extra payments into Medicare Advantage plans – plans owned and overseen by the insurance giant itself. It works like this: insurers get lump-sum payment from the government to handle their enrollees’ benefits. When patients are diagnosed with certain conditions, payments to their insurers increase.   

Under UnitedHealth’s framework, patients are being price-gouged with every visit to their doctors’ offices. Billions of Medicare records reveal that UnitedHealth-employed doctors boasted large upticks in profitable diagnoses after they joined UnitedHealth’s Medicare Advantage plans. UnitedHealth’s Minneapolis branch went so far as to train physicians in the area to report their lucrative diagnoses to the company, including ones that they deemed uncommon. These doctors were also paid bonuses to suggest conditions to patients that garnered large insurance payments, showing without a doubt that Big Healthcare has little concern for the patients it claims to serve. 

Read the rest of Chris’ article on RealClearHealth here