Video: UnitedHealth, deeply embedded in NHS, says its ‘critical’ role is to prevent ‘unsustainable’ treatment

22yo US man died after price of asthma inhaler increased by $473 – CEO’s comments put spotlight on govt’s NHS health rationing plans

US health insurance giant UnitedHealth (UHG) – a firm with a history riddled with lawsuits and accusations of fraud, overbilling and wrongful denial of treatment – owns OptumRX, which now sits at the heart of the NHS after its purchase of patient management system EMIS.

Sir Andrew Witty, the chief executive of UHG, made a video for the firm’s employees after the killing of previous CEO Brian Thompson by vigilante Luigi Mangione, reportedly over the company’s appalling record of AI-driven denials of life-or-death claims by its policyholders – and that video was leaked. In it, he told staff to ignore criticisms of the company and spoke of how ‘critical’ a role UHG and other ‘health companies’ play in blocking ‘unsustainable’ treatment – a euphemism for denying claims and thus care:

Far-right billionaire Elon Musk was less coded in his language, stating that companies must maximise profit for shareholders no matter how ruthlessly this means them behaving.

The Tory government’s ‘integrated healthcare systems’ (ICS) plan for the NHS is copied from the same US system under which UHG and companies like it deny treatment and maximise profits – and ICS rewards ‘NHS’ providers for giving less treatment, by giving them a share of any ‘savings’ against budgets as extra profit. The Starmer ‘Labour’ government has committed to taking ICS even further.

UHG, through Optum RX, sits at the heart of the NHS, as do other giant US healthcare companies invited and empowered by the Tories and their red-team – and Starmer’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting has just appointed a long-term advocate of ICS to run his ten-year ‘slash and burn’ ‘reform’ plan.

Labour is also, for the same profit-maximising reasons, expanding the use of non-doctor and non-nurse ‘physician associates’ and ‘nursing associates’, who have less than half the training of doctors and nurses to cut costs – and is doing so despite the government’s own analysis concluding that the more these roles are used, the more patients will needlessly die, especially those who are poorer.

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