UnitedHealth Group chief executive officer Stephen J. Hemsley, returning to the healthcare giant’s top job after Andrew Witty abruptly stepped down Tuesday said the company has the right strategy in place “for the era ahead.”
Though the 72-year-old Hemsley never really left UnitedHealth when he stepped down as CEO in 2017, remaining chairman of the board now through two of his successors, his leadership was known for calm and steady financial performance. Seldom did UnitedHealth under Hemsley’s 13 years as CEO surprise Wall Street analysts and investors with anything other than meeting or beating quarterly earnings expectations.
In a memo Tuesday morning to employees, Hemsley said UnitedHealth has “the right strategy and structure for the era ahead, especially in the face of a health system that can be disconnected, inconsistent and inequitable.”
“Our mission, our culture, our diverse business model and our value-based care approaches have made meaningful progress to overcome these issues; our task now is to execute even more urgently and precisely along this path moving forward,” Hemsley added. “We are also well along in critical efforts to drive innovation, breakthrough AI applications and distinctive consumer capabilities. These and other modernization and simplification efforts should play powerfully into our future.”
UnitedHealth, which owns the nation’s largest health insurance company in UnitedHealthcare, is also a nationwide provider of medical care services under the Optum umbrella, which includes Optum Rx, Optum Health and its various outpatient clinics, centers and doctor practices as well as other healthcare services.
But in the last two years, UnitedHealth hit rocky times under Witty even though a lot of the problems were out of his control.
Last year ended following the December 4 shooting death of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, which unleashed a barrage of scrutiny on health insurer denials of medical care and certain other business practices from social media trolls and industry critics including some in Congress who say they’d like to see reform.
UnitedHealth, along with most other rival health insurers, have largely remained dark ever since the shooting of Thompson with few press releases and have stripped executive pictures, biographies and other information from their websites.
The shooting came just as UnitedHealth was recovering from a February 2024 cyberattack on the company’s Change Healthcare business that triggered chaos for physicians and medical care providers across the country, paralyzing Change Healthcare’s massive billing and payment system. The attack triggered a shutdown of parts of Change Healthcare’s electronic system, leaving doctors and other providers of medical care without the ability to get insurance approval of patient services.
Hemsley praised Witty’s performance in the memo to UnitedHealth employees.
“It is a great honor for me to follow Andrew Witty in this role,” Hemsley wrote. “The way he has guided UnitedHealth Group showed he was the right leader for an extremely difficult time. Andrew’s character, compassion and commitment shine through every day. Throughout some of the most challenging years this company has faced, Andrew has remained focused on how best to support our customers, consumers, employees and owners.”
Hemsley, who will turn 73 years old in June, retired in 2017 after 13 years and was replaced by Dave Wichmann, who was picked internally and was UnitedHealth CEO until Witty was elevated to the top job in February of 2021. Witty, who had been on UnitedHealth’s board and already run the British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline, had been hired in 2018 to run Optum.
Despite the cyberattack and the shooting of Thompson, UnitedHealth continued to churn out billions of dollars in profits with all businesses growing across the company.
In April, however, UnitedHealth lowered its “2025 performance outlook established in December 2024 to net earnings of $24.65 to $25.15 per share and adjusted earnings of $26 to $26.50 per share.” That compares to a forecast affirmed in January that said net earnings would be “$28.15 to $28.65 per share.”
UnitedHealth’s share price took a major hit in April after disclosing the lowered guidance even though the company’s health insurance plans and Optum businesses are growing with the company, reporting more than $6 billion in first quarter profits.
On Tuesday, UnitedHealth surprised investors and Wall Street analysts again by suspendeding its 2025 outlook “as care activity continued to accelerate while also broadening to more types of benefit offerings than seen in the first quarter, and the medical costs of many Medicare Advantage beneficiaries new to UnitedHealthcare remained higher than expected,” the company said. “The company expects to return to growth in 2026.”
In his memo to employees, Hemsley said he is “optimistic” about the company’s “future since many of the issues standing in the way of achieving our goals are within our capacity to resolve.
“I know we will approach them with humility, rigor and urgency, guided as always by our mission to help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone,” Hemsley said.
“UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare and Optum share an exceptional mission and role in our society,” Hemsley said. “We have an exceptionally capable organization to advance that mission, which deserves a performance that is up to the full potential of our enterprise — the hearts and minds and spirit of all of us, every day, in everything we do. If we can harness that, we will all be part of a legacy of remarkable contributions to our society, from the individual needing care to the national health system whose resources we all depend upon.”