Washington, DC — Despite a devastating hack to UnitedHealth Group’s Change Healthcare subsidiary, which disrupted pharmacy and medical claims processing and sent the healthcare system into prolonged crisis this spring, UnitedHealth Group today announced strong Q1 results and saw its shares jump over 5%. In response, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“This earnings report makes clear that UnitedHealth Group is the definition of a ‘too-big-to-care’ monopolist,” said Benjamin Jolley, Sr. Fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and Independent Pharmacist. “A properly functioning market would discipline a company whose complacency allowed a catastrophic outage across the entire healthcare sector, leaving patients without access to critical medicines and pharmacies and medical practices in financial distress. Instead, Wall Street is now rewarding UnitedHealth. This disconnect highlights that UnitedHealth faces no meaningful competitive pressure to reform its cybersecurity practices–or address any of its myriad other abuses. It’s long past time for the government to take action.”

Change Healthcare is a healthcare electronic data exchange that processes at least half of all health insurance claims and is the largest private processor of prescriptions in the US. Just two years ago, it was acquired by Optum Health—itself a subsidiary of notorious monopolist UnitedHealth Group—igniting concerns that UnitedHealth may have invested in acquiring and integrating Change rather than in service improvements such as data security. The ensuing February 2024 breach debilitated medical and prescription processing across the US, impacting 94% of hospitals.

In the wake of the attack, UnitedHealth reportedly bought up desperate community medical practices unable to access cash amid the outage, capitalizing on the crisis it created to further expand its power. And today, it beat Q1 revenue and adjusted earnings expectations—sending its share price soaring, and leaving the giant largely unphased despite temporary financial losses.

Meanwhile, at a House Energy and Commerce hearing today, committee members—including Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Ranking Member Frank Pallone—as well as policymakers and experts called out the role of consolidation in creating the cybersecurity vulnerability. “UnitedHealth was a target because of its size,” as Rep. Anna Eshoo put it. “The attack shows how UnitedHealth’s anticompetitive practices pose a national security risk.”

Specifically, the hearing emphasized how a judicial decision to approve UnitedHealth’s acquisition of Change in 2022—over a DOJ challenge—contributed to the crisis. “The consolidation of Change, United, and Optum created this consolidation of mission-critical services that created a consolidation of risk that the entire health care sector was exposed to,” said John Riggi, National Advisor for Cybersecurity and Risk at the American Hospital Association. Rep. Larry Bucsohn called “the massive vertical integration in our system … not in the best interest of the American people,” while Rep. Diana Harshbarger called it “a travesty.”

The Department of Justice is reportedly in the midst of a sweeping antitrust probe into United.

Read Economic Liberties Fact Sheet on the Cyberattack here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.