If you have a deal with the biggest PBMs you are getting ripped off
A simple way to realize this is to take both your insurance and PBM contracts and out them in @claudeai and just ask the following
"How am I getting ripped off and what can I do about it "
If you do, please post how it responds here so everyone can learn !
“A nurse records herself begging UnitedHealthcare to approve care for her patient.”
She’s had authorization for OVER A MONTH — and they still won’t provide the service.
Delay after delay, denial after denial — that’s the state of American Healthcare.
American social worker calling the health insurance company that denied a $539 inhaler, and a 22 year old died after choosing to pay his rent instead
A doctor prescribed the inhaler but the insurance company wanted him to fail a bunch of pointless conservative treatments before covering the cost of his inhaler
The insurance company was OptumRx, a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary
We need healthcare reform and we need it right now
How do you lose $60 billion in 24 hours?
By breaking the one rule Wall Street still cares about.
Don’t lie to the market.
And don’t insult its memory.
UnitedHealth did both.
For years, they grew their Medicare Advantage empire by selling simplicity:
$0 premiums.
No deductibles.
Everything included, until it wasn’t.
In 2025, they flipped the script:
Raised out-of-pocket maxes.
Introduced new deductibles.
Assumed seniors wouldn’t notice, or wouldn’t bother to leave.
They were wrong.
They didn’t just lose patients.
They lost trust.
And when trust disappears, so does valuation.
Here’s what happened next:
United projected its first revenue decline since 1989.
CMS proposed Medicare Advantage rates well below expectations.
Wall Street responded.
Lawmakers sold their shares.
Shares dropped 19% in a single day.
$60 billion in market cap gone.
This was a reckoning.
UnitedHealth wasn’t built to deliver care.
It was built to deliver returns.
A denial machine in a white coat.
A hedge fund with a prior auth department.
That model worked, until people paid attention.
Now the market is doing what the regulators didn’t.