Can DOGE straighten this mess out?
In July 2024, the Wall Street Journal concluded that UnitedHealth was the worst offender among private insurers who made dubious diagnoses in their clients in order to trigger large payments from the government's Medicare Advantage program. The patients often did not receive any treatment for those insurer-added diagnoses. The report, based on Medicare data obtained from the federal government under a research agreement, calculated that diagnoses added by UnitedHealth for diseases patients had never been treated for had yielded $8.7 billion in payments to the company in 2021 – over half of its net income of $17 billion for that year.[132]