STAT+: UnitedHealth continues making stealthy deals, pushing deeper into medical care as scrutiny mounts
UnitedHealth acquired or created 250 subsidiaries in 2024 as it pursues an ambitious vertical integration strategy.
UnitedHealth Group, the largest health care company in the U.S., has clear ambitions of getting bigger.
The sprawling conglomerate — which owns a major health insurance company, physician practices, a pharmacy benefit manager, and numerous other firms — acquired or created more than 250 subsidiaries in 2024. Pretty much all of those deals weren’t publicly announced, since the transactions are small relative to UnitedHealth’s size. And just like in 2023, UnitedHealth has prioritized outpatient surgery centers.
UnitedHealth acquired full or partial ownership stakes in more than 100 surgery centers in 2024, according to a STAT review of UnitedHealth’s newest annual financial documents. Many of those outpatient centers are focused on highly profitable services, like heart cath labs, orthopedic surgery, ophthalmology, and gastroenterology. More than a dozen are part of a joint venture with Texas Health Resources, a nonprofit hospital system in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that generated $6 billion in revenue last year.
