UnitedHealth wants its ‘swagger’ back, plans to boot a million seniors off Medicare Advantage to get it

It’s safe to say people don’t have much affection for UnitedHealth. A year ago, the healthcare insurance provider’s CEO, Brian Thompson, was assassinated by Luigi Mangione on the streets of Manhattan. The public’s reaction? Well, let’s just say few tears were shed.

The killing focused attention on UnitedHealth’s history of denying its customers access to healthcare, resulting in a wave of testimonies from furious and miserable customers who’d had to deal with their penny-pinching bureaucracy.

But now, a year on, UnitedHealth is apparently trying to get back in the groove. At this month’s UBS healthcare conference, the company’s chief financial officer Wayne DeVeydt told those in attendance that they want to “get back to the swagger the company once had.”

And how is UnitedHealth planning to get its “swagger” back? Why, by squeezing elderly seniors off Medicare Advantage plans to maximise profits. As reported by Morning Star:

UnitedHealth now plans to exit unprofitable Medicare Advantage and Affordable Care Act products, raising rates on ACA plans by about 26% alongside other health insurers. They’re not fixing the business model, but rather purging the patients who make it look broken.”

Biden/Harris expanded Trump's privatization of Medicare by forcing seniors onto "Medicare Advantage" plans against their will.

Now UnitedHealth is k*lling many of those seniors by dropping their Medicare Advantage plans. For "swagger." pic.twitter.com/3MKjtwkaYD

— A Left-Wing Account ™️ (@PushDemsLeft) November 27, 2025

Something must be done

Concluding that healthcare insurance providers are the lowest scum imaginable is a rare bit of bipartisan politics. Senior Democrats have already put forward proposals to break up UnitedHealth to better protect patients, and Donald Trump himself said on TruthSocial in early November:

“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over.” 

He later added:

“THE MONEY MUST NOW GO DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE, TAKING THE ‘FAT CAT’ INSURANCE COMPANIES OUT OF THE CORRUPT SYSTEM OF HEALTHCARE.”

So, with both sides of the aisle in rare agreement, something is going to get done, right? Well… no. UnitedHealth is currently spending a record-breaking amount of money lobbying Trump allies not to restrict its activities and, as is demonstrated literally every day, buying a politician is surprisingly cheap.

Even so, you can’t help but feel that there’s a groundswell consensus forming across the political spectrum that America needs to destroy this leech on people’s livelihoods and health. For-profit healthcare was always going to result in misery, pain, and death – there’s a reason the rest of the world avoids it like the plague.

So maybe UnitedHealth should get its swagger back – and swagger right off into oblivion.