A look inside UnitedHealth |’s physician empire STAT

YOUnitedHealth Group started as a small health insurer in Minnesota and has since grown into a modern Standard Oil, exerting unparalleled dominance over the healthcare industry in the United States.

It’s no secret that UnitedHealth is a behemoth: It’s the nation’s largest health insurer and the fourth-largest company of any type by revenue, just behind Apple. And thanks to a series of collusive deals, nearly 1 in 10 American physicians—some 90,000 doctors—now works for or is under its influence by UnitedHealth, more than any major clinic chain or hospital system.

But behind these statistics is a lot that UnitedHealth doesn’t want you to know. A STAT investigation reveals the untold story of how the company has gobbled up multiple parts of the healthcare industry and exploited its growing power to milk the system for profit. UnitedHealth’s tactics have transformed medicine in communities across the country into an assembly line that treats millions of patients as money-making products.