Trust me it isn’t 6%. United is one of the largest healthcare companies by market cap. They have aggressively acquired physicians under Optum, and use an accounting trick called intercompany eliminations to shuffle profits and skirt the law on the medical loss ratio. https://www.axios.com/2021/07/16/unitedhealth-optum-provider...

The US has a population of 300 million people. This works out to just $300 per person per quarter (or $1,200 annually). Given almost 20% of the population is over 65 (old people really put up the healthcare cost numbers) and the sophistication of our healthcare system (we have the tech to keep you alive or prolong your life despite pretty hairy stuff happening to you), it is not a very surprising number. The real question is how to afford it all.

Aren't you conflating UnitedHealthcare with the US healthcare industry? Your point still stands, just off by under an order of magnitude.

Yes, you are correct. UHC has 15% of the insurance market so my numbers are (roughly) off by an order of magnitude.

Consider that you also pay for Medicare and Medicaid, which combined costs as much per capita (not per user) as the UK NHS. US healthcare is extraordinarily expensive.

Point well taken. Anything US-wide adds up to a lot of money

Last I checked United had 50M people covered by their insurance plans and $400B in revenue. Rough math would be $8,000 per person.

But the revenue is similar to Amazon. They buy something for $100 and sell it for $102. Revenues look high, but just because they are a middleman.

The health insurance industry makes more money than the oil industry. It isn't a coincidence that most of our taxes go to healthcare and the top grossing industries are all built around it.

Oil business earns far more profit at far higher profit margins. Exxon alone earns more profit than all managed care organizations (health insurance companies) some years.

Revenue that is 95% paid to vendors and employees is not an interesting statistic, on a company level.