I am close to retirement but far away from Medicare age. The health care situation alone makes me want to leave this country. It’s such a mess. And I don’t see any movement to improve things. It’s just getting worse every year.

For-profit pay-viders (payer-provider mergers) should be illegal. In theory they can drive greater efficiencies that pass down to consumers, but in practice pay-vider integration makes available a lot more levers to screw consumers. All of those levers are easier to pull than increasing efficiency of care delivery.

If you want to act as both insurer and provider, then you should have to be a non-profit and have thorough performance monitoring in place to ensure you're passing what's possible back to consumers.

Does anyone have something positive to share about UnitedHealth?

The law of supply and demand controls the high prices we see in healthcare. Doctors have the most powerful trade union on earth and have lobbies for strict limits on the number of new doctors per year by limiting residencies.

Shrink the federal government and its overbearing regulations in healthcare and allow many more people to go through residency to become doctors.

It’s terrible that this is an area that is caught up in political ideology. Somehow, healthcare MUST be decoupled from capitalistic incentives. I don’t pretend to have the answer but continuing on this path will lead to worsening patient outcomes. We cannot have corporations expecting to make a dollar off human life.

United is a disaster of a company. Physicians hate them. Patients hate them. I feel bad for anyone forced to deal with their BS.

Their reputation is so bad I wouldn’t be surprised if they rename the company at some point in hoping people forget that they’re United Healthcare.

I found it’s terrible too. Especially with dental insurance they negotiate terrible rates so you end up paying a lot more than if you went with the local Blue Cross Blue Shield or Delta dental.

My experience with United Health Care has been terrible.