Cut Staff, Get Money
UnitedHealthcare's business model draws more scrutiny. Massachusetts' Attorney General says it overcharged the state by more than $100 million.
This Week In Blunders – May 24-30
“A lifetime of treatment is preferable to a cure.”– Elisabeth Rosenthal
UnitedHealthcare coded its members as sicker than they were so it could overcharge the state of Massachusetts’ Medicaid system by more than $100 million, according to a lawsuit filed by the state’s attorney general on Friday.
The nation’s largest health insurer pursued a “growth-at-all-costs strategy” through its Senior Care Options program, the lawsuit alleges.
“Cut staff,” “[g]et more numbers,” and “[g]et more money from the state,” is how the program ran, the complaint filed by Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell says.
Sound familiar?
Minnesota-based UnitedHealth called the lawsuit “meritless” and the AG “simply wrong.”
For now, this is just another chapter in what is becoming a long-running medical drama.
The insurer has been under fire since Brian Thompson, the CEO of its UnitedHealthcare division, was gunned down in the streets of New York City in December 2024.
On the day that the alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione, made his first court appearance in February 2025, The Wall Street Journal published an exclusive, page-one story reporting that the Justice Department was investigating UnitedHealth’s Medicare billing practices.
Mangione, meanwhile, has pleaded not guilty in widely followed proceedings where he is sometimes lauded as a folk hero. Yes, it’s a sick company in a sick world.
UnitedHealth has also drawn Justice Department scrutiny for assembling a healthcare empire that reaches far beyond insurance. Through its Optum subsidiaries, the company insures patients, employs doctors, processes claims, manages prescription-drug benefits, and collects data from nearly every step of the healthcare transaction.
Do you see the checks and balances in America’s healthcare system? OK, how about just the checks?
UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty was bagging annual compensation worth $26 million a year until he abruptly resigned in May 2025. On the day after his resignation announcement, The Wall Street Journal reported that UnitedHealth was “under criminal investigation for possible Medicare fraud.”
The patients may have gotten sicker on paper. But the company could be getting even sicker in court.
Googling the future
Federal prosecutors say a Google software engineer parlayed confidential search data into a $1.2 million Polymarket winning streak.
Michele Spagnuolo, 36, allegedly made big bets on who would emerge among the most-searched people of 2025, but unlike most others on the prediction market, he wasn’t speculating. He allegedly misappropriated the answers.
The Italian citizen residing in Switzerland traded under the name “AlphaRaccoon,” which sounds like a varmint that goes dumpster-diving through data bins.
Just goes to show that when you’re betting on Polymarket or Kalshi, you’re guessing about the future against others who damn well know it.
The AlphaRaccoon is now facing multiple charges and decades in prison. Google put him on leave from a gig where he was easily making seven figures a year.
Sometimes the smartest money makes the dumbest bets.
Running on fumes
American households have spent an extra $450 on energy since President Donald Trump launched his war on Iran, according to Moody’s Analytics in an analysis shared exclusively with CNBC on Friday.
The real pain though, is up the road.
“Unless the war ends soon, financially pressed consumers will have no option but to turn more cautious in their spending, threatening the already soft economy,” Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi told CNBC.
Fuel prices haven’t soared too high because the world has been tapping strategic reserves and inventories, but those tanks are running dry.
“We’re approaching unheard of inventory levels. I mean really, really low levels,” said Exxon Senior Vice President Neil Chapman said at a New York investor conference on Thursday. “
“You can debate whether that’s going to hit, those really low levels, in two weeks or three weeks. Once you get to that point, then you’ll see price shoot up.”
Oil prices have recently slipped below $90 a barrel on hopes that the war could end soon. Phew! But Chapman says they could soon rise to $150 if it doesn’t.
And you know that Iran would love to see that happen, no matter what it costs its people. It may be an even better lever on the world than commanding a nuclear arsenal.
And then he was sentenced to … four years in the White House
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