The DOJ Is Digging Into UnitedHealth’s Billing… and It’s Starting to Look Like a Massive Con

Well, well, well… it’s all starting to make sense now. If you’ve been watching UnitedHealth over the past few months, you might’ve thought the company was just having a bad quarter because of tariffs or something because of Trump. You know, rising medical costs, bad guidance, investors overreacting to a couple headlines… the usual “healthcare is hard” excuses. But now, based on what we’ve got cooking this morning, it’s starting to look a lot more like an episode of Dateline.

Back on April 17th, UnitedHealth dropped its Q1 earnings report and could’ve avoided the long dreadful dry call and said, “Yeah… we’re screwed for the rest of 2025.” The stock promptly fell 6%. Analysts pretended to be shocked. Reddit conspiracy threads were revived. But for the most part, Wall Street shrugged it off as a bad beat in a bad year. 

Fast forward to this past Tuesday… and the floodgates burst wide open. First, CEO Andrew Witty pulled the old “leaving for personal reasons” card (and if you remember, I said something bigger must have been happening). On the same day, the company suspended its 2025 financial forecast…  because too many old people are… wait for it… using the insurance they paid $1,000+ a month for.

Investors didn’t take that well. Shares cratered 18%... a four-year low that wiped out $63 billion in market cap before lunch (more than the market cap of Spotify and Lyft combined).

And now, as I suspected something deeper was taking place… the Department of Justice is breaking the door down to find the smoking gun. According to the Wall Street Journal, UnitedHealth is now under a criminal investigation by the DOJ for potential Medicare fraud. Specifically, they're probing the insurer’s secret little side hustle known as Medicare Advantage… aka, the government-funded buffet where private insurers get paid more when their patients are sicker (wink wink).

UnitedHealth says it hasn’t been notified about the probe. Which, yeah, sounds like something you say right before a dozen agents show up at your office with a printer and a warrant. The company insists it stands by “the integrity of our Medicare Advantage program”... which is a very normal thing to say when the feds are sniffing around your billing codes. This all follows months of ugly headlines. Back in December, Brian Thompson, CEO of the company’s insurance division, was shot and killed outside a New York conference. The market barely flinched. But the public perception? That’s another story.

Overnight, UnitedHealth wasn’t just a giant insurance company. It became the symbol of everything broken in American healthcare. Old exposés about the company’s ruthless claim denials flooded timelines. TikTokers were suddenly quoting Senate reports. Reddit lit up like it was Gamestop in 2021. By the next day, Mangione wasn’t just a suspect… he was being memed as a superhero (for murdering someone).

Things only got weirder from there. A securities fraud lawsuit filed earlier this year alleged that UnitedHealth had quietly gone soft on customers after the shooting… pulling back its aggressive claim denials to keep public outrage from spiraling. The company didn’t disclose it was changing policies, the suit said, and shareholders felt misled. That idea (whether true or not) got picked up by analysts, one of whom claimed UNH was trying to look more like a “respectable” player in the system. But PR spin isn’t what’s wrecking their stock. The real problem is that people are sick… and actually using the damn product.

In Q1 2025, UnitedHealth had to cough up $8 billion more in medical costs compared to the same period in 2024. You see, insurance works great when nobody needs it. But the moment too many seniors start scheduling appointments, getting prescriptions, or (God forbid) using their Medicare Advantage benefits, the whole thing starts to collapse like a Jenga tower on an airplane.

So now UnitedHealth is caught in the world’s worst balancing act. Start denying more claims, and they get roasted in the media. Keep paying them, and shareholders start throwing chairs. The company’s down 38% in just 2025. And who’s been dragged out of retirement to deal with it all? Stephen Hemsley, the former CEO, now back at the helm like a high school principal called in to stop a senior prank involving gasoline and fireworks.

But make no mistake… this is what it looks like when the biggest health insurer in the country finally has to answer for a system that was never built to handle the thing it’s supposed to do: pay for care. This story’s far from over, but it will be interesting to see if UnitedHealth gets a slap on the wrist or actually punished if found guilty.

PS: It’s a mess out there.

One day the market’s ripping, the next day it’s Black Monday all over again. Recent earning’s reports have been a total coin flip. One stock beats and explodes 30%… the next misses by a penny and gets sent to the Shadow Realm. And through it all, everyone’s begging for Jerome Powell to finally cave and cut rates.

But underneath all the panic headlines (“Inflation too sticky!” “Recession imminent!” “Tariffs round 4 incoming!”) something wild is happening…

We’re seeing violent price action. Especially in the small-cap space, where low floats and high anxiety are creating the perfect recipe for 100%+ pops before lunchtime. Some of these names are moving 200%+ in under 24 hours… and to our knowledge, NO ONE else is covering them.

Except us.

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