A look at STAT’s investigation into the health care colossus that is UnitedHealth Group

Happy Thursday, updaters! Today, we have a special edition of “Weekly Update.” We wanted to give you a closer look at a large STAT Investigation: Health Care's Colossus. (We do highlight some of the other big stories from the week too.) Let’s hop to it…?

UnitedHealth’s empire of profit?

Our colleagues Bob Herman, Tara Bannow, Casey Ross, and Lizzy Lawrence published the first story in an investigative series, which details how UnitedHealth Group has gobbled up multiple pieces of the health care industry and used its growing power to milk the system for profit.

UnitedHealth is the country’s largest health insurer and the fourth-largest company of any type by revenue, just behind Apple.

The company has built a doctor empire by making physician acquisitions year after year through a surefire approach: Money, and a lot of it.

While UnitedHealth expanded in patient care, it also grew its dominance in Medicare Advantage, becoming the country’s biggest Medicare Advantage insurer and its biggest physician group.

The government pays Medicare Advantage insurers based on how sick their members are, as determined by diagnostic codes from doctors. Former UnitedHealth doctors and employees told STAT they felt pressured to make their patients seem as sick as possible.

UnitedHealth offered bonuses or scrutinized the performance of those who were not coding as much as their peers in an effort to extract massive sums from the program.

Watch this video to understand more about how private insurers can use this coding system to increase their profit.

Health Care’s Colossus is an ongoing series from STAT. Are you a doctor working at a clinic that’s owned by or affiliated with UnitedHealth’s Optum? Are you a patient who gets care from an Optum clinic? Share your story with STAT.

And again, you can read the full story here.

What we’re reading this week:

CVS and its PBM agree to pay $45 million to Illinois for failing to pass drug rebates

Bird flu that infected 6 Colorado poultry workers is closely related to the virus in cows

Express Scripts overcharged postal workers by $45 million

A pricey Gilead HIV drug could be made for dramatically less than the company charges

A preview of Neurocrine’s muscarinic drug readout

Opinion: An aging geriatrician wonders: Who will care for me?