Andrew Witty has abruptly stepped down as CEO of UnitedHealth Group, America’s largest healthcare company, which posted $400.3 billion in revenue in 2024, for what the company said were unspecified “personal reasons.” UnitedHealth recently reported a plunge in profits that sent the stock price down 22% in one day. In pre-market trading the stock dived another 10% as investors saw the news as a sign of worse performance to come.
Stephen Hemsley, board chairman and a former longtime CEO, will return as chief executive and remains chairman. Hemsley ran the company from 2006 to 2017, overseeing several of the mergers and acquisitions that made UnitedHealth a giant.
The company, America’s largest seller of health care insurance, attracted headlines and controversy last December when one of its top executives, Brian Thompson, was shot dead on a New York City sidewalk. The bullet casings had the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose” scratched on them, words sometimes used to describe how insurance companies avoid paying claims. An uprising of fury almost instantly erupted across social media—not against Thompson’s killer but against Thompson and UnitedHealth.
The company said its startlingly poor performance in the first quarter was a result of “heightened care activity” in its insurance business—more people needing more care than expected. When UnitedHealth announced those results in mid-April, it sharply reduced its expected profits for the year. Now, with the announcement of Witty stepping down, the company has withdrawn any guidance for 2025 because, it says, the trend of more patients needing more care is continuing. UnitedHealth has grown strongly for years but apparently doesn’t anticipate growing at all in 2025; the company said it “expects to return to growth in 2026.”
It’s a stunning turnaround for the largest company in the largest sector of the largest economy in the world. United Health is currently No. 4 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest companies in America by revenue, and No. 8 on the Fortune Global 500.
The big question now is whether UnitedHealth’s problems reflect trends in the industry, as its unmatched size and diversity might suggest, or whether the problems are unique to the company, which would likely batter its stock even more.