STAT+: Largest U.S. pension fund claims UnitedHealth cheated investors by concealing Medicare Advantage scheme

The country’s largest public pension fund claims in an amended lawsuit that UnitedHealth Group’s leaders have hid the company’s illegal behavior for years — even as damning media reports and government investigations emerged as recently as last month — so they could continue to make millions from selling stock. 

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERs, originally brought the case last May, but filed an amended complaint in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota last week that extensively cites STAT’s Health Care’s Colossus series and incorporates the cascade of developments over the past year, including a damning government watchdog report and the revelation of a second Justice Department investigation into UnitedHealth, a Minnesota-based conglomerate that drew more than $400 billion in revenue last year. 

CalPERS, a UnitedHealth shareholder, filed the proposed class-action case on behalf of anyone who bought UnitedHealth stock between Sept. 22, 2021 and Feb. 20, 2025. The pension fund, which has more than 2 million members and over $500 billion in assets under management, claims that UnitedHealth cheated its stockholders and violated federal securities laws by engaging in an illegal scheme to upcode Medicare Advantage patients while failing to disclose the sizable risk that scheme posed. Instead, the complaint says the company’s leaders used their earnings calls to tout UnitedHealth’s strong Medicare Advantage performance, artificially inflating its stock. 

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