As Americans Ration Care, Health Insurers Rake In Record $71.3 Billion In Profits

Despite rising out-of-pocket costs and millions losing coverage, U.S. health insurance giants posted record profits in 2024 while their CEOs took home a combined $146 million.

By Alexis Sterling, Nation of Change

As millions of Americans struggle with mounting medical debt, delayed care, and shrinking access to providers, the seven largest publicly traded U.S. health insurance companies reported a combined $71.3 billion in profits for 2024—setting a new record and fueling growing bipartisan scrutiny of the industry’s practices. The profits, up by more than half a billion dollars from 2023, were released ahead of former Cigna executive Wendell Potter’s testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Potter, now president of the nonprofit Center for Health and Democracy, compiled the financial data and published it in his Health Care un-covered newsletter. Alongside a breakdown of revenues and profits for UnitedHealth, CVS/Aetna, Cigna, Elevance, Humana, Centene, and Molina, Potter also released CEO compensation figures showing the companies’ top executives collectively earned $146.1 million in 2024. “That’s enough to cover annual premiums for thousands of American families,” he wrote.

While Americans skipped medications and rationed insulin, “shareholders are not the only ones benefiting from the care-restricting barriers insurers have erected to boost profits,” Potter said. “The CEOs of those seven companies took home a combined $146.1 million in 2024 compensation.”

The scale of the industry’s gains, he argued, reveals a deeper crisis in the healthcare system: “So, what’s driving the revenue surge? Gouging. Insurers continued to jack up premiums for their commercial customers and overcharge the government.”