'Gouging': US Health Insurance Giants Raked in Over $71 Billion in Profits Last Year

The seven largest publicly traded U.S. health insurance companies made a collective $71.3 billion in profits last year, and their CEOs took home a total of $146.1 million in compensation, according to an analysis released Wednesday by an ex-industry executive.

Wendell Potter, a former vice president for corporate communications at Cigna who now leads the nonprofit Center for Health and Democracy, compiled the data ahead of his recent testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

As Potter detailed for his newsletter, Health Care un-covered, the companies—UnitedHealth, CVS/Aetna, Cigna, Elevance, Humana, Centene, and Molina—boosted their profits by more than half a billion dollars from 2023 to 2024.

(Image: Health Care un-covered)

Alongside a chart detailing the companies' 2023 and 2024 revenues and profits, Potter published one showing each CEO's compensation. He also pointed out that their collective take-home pay is "enough to cover annual premiums for thousands of American families."

(Image: Health Care un-covered)

"So, what's driving the revenue surge?" Potter wrote. "Gouging. Insurers continued to jack up premiums for their commercial customers and overcharge the government."

He highlighted how investigations have exposed rampant fraud and upcoding with private Medicare Advantage plans and noted that "Medicaid managed care is a gold mine, too."

Potter further noted that "to the dismay of shareholders, the big seven insurers have had to admit that so far in 2025, they've paid more medical claims than they had expected, which means their profits were down somewhat during the first months of the year."

The expert warned that the American public should "expect even more financial pain (and difficulty getting the care you need) as these companies do all they can to get their profit margins back to where Wall Street wants them."

His warning comes as new polling makes clear that Americans are already feeling the pain from healthcare bills. Results released Monday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research show that 17% of U.S. adults have used buy now, pay later services for medical or dental care.

Most Americans are also stressed by healthcare costs. According to the poll, 42% of adults identified that as a major stressor, and another 36% said it's a minor stressor. Other sources of stress include grocery prices, housing, savings, and wages.

Healthcare could become an ever bigger source of stress soon, as Republicans' recently signed budget reconciliation package starts to strip millions of people of their insurance coverage, thanks to the law's attacks on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

"Cuts to the ACA will raise premiums for almost 23M Americans by hundreds of dollars each year," Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on social media Monday. "Working and middle-class families can't afford that. We need to pass Medicare for All and make sure health insurance stays affordable for all Americans."

While more than 100 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives and over a dozen senators support the Medicare for All Act, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the proposal remains opposed by not only Republicans—who control both chambers—but also some corporate Democrats.