AOC humiliates RFK over UnitedHealth rip-off – the private health group who fund Wes Streeting

US lawmaker Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has humiliated Donald Trump’s health tsar Robert Kennedy over his increases in public funding going into the profits of private health giant UnitedHealth, whom she describes as “one of the worst [actors in profit-driven healthcare]”:

‘AOC’ was not wrong.

UnitedHealth: disgusting

UnitedHealth has been repeatedly sued and fined for overbilling and “immoral and barbaric” denial of treatment – its previous chief executive Brian Thompson was murdered, allegedly by Luigi Mangione, over the firm’s use of AI to deny care – and has been successfully sued in connection with racketeering practices. In addition it has:

• settled cases for fraud
• been forced to pay out $350m for withholding payment for treatment
• paid massive fines for unfair insurance practices
• been accused and sued by a former executive for overbilling US ‘Medicare’ by “hundreds of millions and likely billions” – and is now under renewed investigation by the US Department of Justice over the same issue
• been fined for refusing and delaying patient treatment
• paid $1.8m to settle a lawsuit for breaking laws in its handling of patient claims for autism and addiction treatment
• been found unanimously guilty by  jury of “oppression, fraud, and malice” in its conduct and penalised $60m in damages
• named by the Wall Street Journal as the ‘worst offender’ among health insurance companies that overbilled the Medicare Advantage system by around $50 billion
• secretly paid nursing homes not to refer sick residents to hospital for treatment
• threatened journalists, social media users and others who criticised it

and much more.

Despite its record and the fact that its chief executive has said the firm’s most important job is to prevent too many patients receiving treatment, a UnitedHealth subsidiary – like other US health firms – has been deeply embedded in the NHS via its ownership of patient management system EMIS and its former executives play or have played key roles in the ongoing fragmentation, downgrading and privatisation of the UK’s healthcare system.

Wes Streeting: in bed with private healthcare

The UK’s current health secretary Wes Streeting has accepted large amounts of cash from one of UnitedHealth’s main investors and plenty from other private health interests – by a year ago, more than £311,000.

Streeting is not alone – the whole Labour front bench is at the same trough. Labour’s largest ever donation came last year from a hedge fund with massive investments in private health, including in UnitedHealth – yet another donation in the pattern of Starmer’s delayed declarations. Another major Labour donor runs a UK-based health hedge fund and also bankrolled the Labour Together group that conned Labour members into supporting Starmer’s leadership bid and has been exposed withholding declarations of donations in The Fraud, Paul Holden’s book currently being serialised by the Canary. And according to EveryDoctor, Starmer and his cabinet ministers have accepted at least half a million pounds in donations from private health companies and investors just in 2023 and 2024.

None of these donors have given him money out of the goodness of their hearts – all will expect their pound of NHS flesh in return. Or tonne of flesh – private contractors already enjoy tens of billions of NHS funding; Starmer’s ‘Labour’ government has added billions more since it got its feet under the table in Downing Street and Streeting has committed to going much further still.

Kennedy’s embarrassing performance facing questions over the company’s profiteering in the US has an amusing side, but there is nothing funny about the toxic impact of UnitedHealth and other privatisers on that nation’s health care, nor about the donation-greased hold they have and are extending on the UK’s supposedly National Health Service, which Kennedy’s haplessness serves again to highlight.

Featured image via the Canary