Timeline: CEO Andrew Witty’s tenure marked by a pandemic, stock swings and pain

It‘s been a rough year or so for UnitedHealth Group.

The Eden Prairie-based health care giant has weathered the shocks of a top executive’s slaying, shareholder pressure, government investigations, public criticism over insurance coverage denials and, now, the suspension of financial guidance with the abrupt resignation of its CEO.

Since Brian Thompson, chief executive of the company’s insurance arm UnitedHealthcare, was killed on Dec. 4, shares have fallen roughly 38%.

The woes, however, go far beyond sluggish financial performance.

Andrew Witty, former chief executive at the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, took the top job at UnitedHealth Group after leading the company’s Optum health care services division.

Stephen Hemsley, chair of the company’s board of directors, said in a statement at the time: “Andrew Witty combines an extraordinary breadth and depth of health care experience, sophisticated strategic thinking and outstanding leadership development skills.”

The timing of the executive transition puzzled analysts, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported, as Witty had only recently returned to the company after leaving for months to help the World Health Organization develop and distribute COVID-19 vaccines.

Yet by the time the calendar year ended, UnitedHealth Group had posted an annual profit of $17.3 billion on $287.6 billion in revenue.

The company’s giant UnitedHealthcare insurance division announced agreements with Walmart and a growing list of retailers to make available free at-home COVID-19 tests when subscribers present their ID cards at pharmacy counters.

The omicron virus variant was surging at the time, leaving consumers frustrated by testing shortages. The ebb and flow of COVID-related disruptions were central to Witty‘s first years as CEO.

“I think it‘s inevitable that we’re going to continue to see outages as you go through these geographic kind of surges that have characterized this pandemic,” he said at the time.

As the COVID-19 pandemic was receding, UnitedHealth Group revealed that it saw an increase in patients seeking care for mental health and substance-use disorders, prompting it to adjust benefits.

Witty said, “From our perspective, it is an encouraging sign that more people are seeking help, yet the ongoing shortage of qualified care providers has caused significant access challenges.”

The company reported that the increasing trend was across all ages and included more people seeking anxiety and depression care.

Witty called on pharmaceutical companies to make the popular and then-novel GLP-1 weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy more affordable.

Just mentioning the expensive drugs became shorthand to explain the escalation of health care cost trends that dominated the final two years of Witty‘s tenure.

“Innovation that is not affordable is not innovative,” he said at the time. “I don’t think anybody at UnitedHealth Group has any argument with the prospects and possibility for the future of this drug class. ... But, ultimately, it has to be affordable.”

For full-year 2023, the company saw an adjusted profit of $22.38 billion on revenue of $371.6 billion.

The troubles started when UnitedHealth Group disclosed that its Change Healthcare business in Tennessee was the victim of a major cyberattack.

The company initially said the incident was perpetrated by a “nation-state associated cyber security threat actor,” but it later clarified the attack was attributed to “a cybercrime threat actor who has represented itself to us as ALPHV/Blackcat.”

Lawmakers slammed the group’s cybersecurity during a Capitol Hill hearing, questioning whether the company had become too big. Witty apologized at the hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, admitting the hackers accessed a portal lacking multifactor authentication protections.

The massive cyberattack affected roughly 1 in 2 Americans, and as of February, Change Healthcare was still mailing data breach notices to patients.

As the year went on, scrutiny came over antitrust matters at UnitedHealth. The Federal Trade Commision raised tough questions of the company and others in the pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) business. And the Justice Department sued to block UnitedHealth Group’s proposed $3.3 billion acquisition of a home care and hospice company.

Eleven people protesting coverage denials by UnitedHealthcare were arrested at the company’s headquarters in July.

A few months later, about 50 people gathered to protests PBMs outside the company’s Optum headquarters building.

In October, a federal watchdog report asserted that UnitedHealth Group stood out from its peers in using questionable diagnosis data to boost Medicare Advantage payments from the government — an allegation that dovetailed with investigative reporting from national journalism outposts that year.

A hooded gunman waited outside a Manhattan hotel for about five minutes before shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Thompson. The word “deny” was allegedly scrawled on one of the bullet casings found at the scene.

In a video message to employees, Witty called the slaying of Thompson, who led the company’s insurance arm, “immeasurably sad” and “profoundly shocking.”

“I’d like to ask you all to look out for yourselves,” Witty said in a video message. “This is a moment where, in among everything else, we’re reminded of the fragility of families, of individuals and the importance that that really represents.”

Luigi Mangione was soon arrested for the killing and last month pleaded not guilty to a federal murder charge after a massive manhunt.

The killing has prompted concerns and conversation about insurance claim denials and prior-authorization rules. Witty acknowledged the health insurance industry, including employers and governments who sponsor health plans, needed to better explain how coverage decisions are made.

The company cut its earnings for the year due to a surprise jump in medical costs, causing a stock price plummet that erased more than $120 billion in market value.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported it was the largest single-day drop in UnitedHealth’s stock price since the 1990s. Witty called the company’s performance “unusual and unacceptable.”

“We must and will execute to better anticipate and address these factors,” Witty said during a call with investors.

In an abrupt change, the company said Tuesday morning that Witty is leaving his post for personal reasons, but will remain as a senior adviser. Board chair and former CEO Hemsley has become CEO again. Executives tell investors the company expects to return to growth in 2026.

“Steve Hemsley brings a combination of strategic vision and deep operational focus that are highly valuable to our company,” said Michele Hooper, lead independent director of UnitedHealth Group, in a statement.