An oligopoly exists when a small number of very large companies control most of the market. The healthcare market is one of them and the UnitedHealth Group(UHG) is one of the small number of very large companies. It’s good if you’re one of the inner circlet but bad for anyone outside and trying to break in. It’s even worse if you’re a consumer of that market because you’re the one paying for the high price of the lack of competition.
Already gargantuan in size UHG wants to be even bigger. They have changed the entire healthcare delivery landscape by integrating, absorbing, ingesting, acquiring, and merging with every small independent company in sight. How big are they, you ask?
They have 380,000 employees, That’s more than 55 countries.
In 2021, they grossed $285,273 billion. That’s more than all of Mexico and more than 212 other countries.
They began as a health insurance company only. Then they saw the immense profitability of the pharmacy benefit company and created OptumRx. They orgaanized Optum to oversee its operations.. Next came OptumHealth for care delivery, a technology arm Optuminsight. Each of Optum’s three divisons, OptumRx, OptumHealth and Optuminsight, have undergone exponential growth.
Optum Health, the care delivery arm is now the nation’s leading employer of physicans and employs or is affiliated with 70,000 physicians nationwide across 2,200 locations. That’s more physicians than Kaiser’s 24,000, the Hospital Corporation of American’s 47,000 or Ascension’s 49,000.
Optum Insight, the company’s data analytics business experienced, a 35 percent increase from last year and Optum Rx, the third largest pharmacy benefit manager, saw revenue grow 15 percent.
If that isn’t enough,, Optum owns Davita, the company with the most dialysis centers in the country.
Has it become too big to fail and is it time to start breaking them up like Ma Bell?