Health insurance CEOs on the hot seat: Premiums up 90% since Obamacare launched 16 years ago

Health insurance premiums have skyrocketed roughly 90% on average since Obamacare launched in March 2010, and the price of health care remains stubborn against political efforts to control it.

In 2010, the average annual premium for single coverage was $5,066, while the average annual family coverage premium was $13,890. Those numbers hit $9,325 and $26,993 for single and family coverage, respectively, in 2025.

U.S. health care costs grow faster than inflation, exceeding other large, wealthy nations in per capita health spending, according to KFF, a health policy research non-profit.

Against this backdrop, some of the top health care executives in the U.S. weathered an all-day grilling Thursday in front of two House committees.

Lawmakers from both parties pressed the CEOs about their constituents’ stories about denied claims and skyrocketing premiums.

The CEOs could not defend their company’s decisions, saying they were not familiar with the specifics of those cases. 

UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley fielded the most questions about denied claims. He agreed that the cases the lawmakers raised sounded problematic, and he promised to work with them to get to the bottom of it. 

“At the end of the day, 99% of all the care is covered,” he said. 

Mr. Hemsley took over as the head of the company a few months after the December 2024 murder of Brian Thompson, the head of United’s insurance arm.

The accused killer, Luigi Mangione, is still awaiting trial, but prosecutors have diary entries that detail his plans to target the health insurance industry over his frustrations about corporate greed.

Mr. Hemsley said Mr. Thompson was “a force for good” who worked in “creative and effective” ways to address challenges surrounding health care costs. 

Four other CEOs testified: David Cordani of Cigna, Gail Boudreaux of Elevance Health, David Joyner of CVS Health, which acquired health insurer Aetna in 2018, and Paul Markovich of Ascendiun, a nonprofit under parent organization Blue Shield of California.

The House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee and the House Ways and Means Committee hosted the hearings. 

In the latter, Rep. Linda Sanchez noted her own personal story of a denied claim for in-home physical therapy after she had knee replacement surgery last year.

“I’m a member of Congress, and was on the phone battling with my own insurance company,” the California Democrat said. She did not name the company but said she purchases her insurance on the D.C. public health exchange, as lawmakers are required to do under Obamacare. 

The personal stories about denied claims offered a few poignant moments through hours of debate about the root causes of rising health care costs and the policies that can be used to lower them. 

There was broad bipartisan agreement that marketplace consolidation and vertical integration are one of the biggest problems.

“If I had my way, I’d turn all of you guys into dust, we’d start back from scratch,” said Rep. Greg Murphy, North Carolina Republican. “We’d have competition in the industry. We’d have associated health plans, and we would have nonprofit hospitals, rather than profit being put over patients.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, used CVS Health as an example of the problem. She said the company owns health insurer Aetna, Oak Street Health medical clinics, CVS Pharmacies and CVS Caremark, the pharmacy benefit manager that helps negotiate rebates and prescription prices. 

“Whether you’re a blue-blooded capitalist or a card-carrying Democratic socialist, I think corporate monopolies are a problem, and this vertical integration is destroying people’s ability to access care,” she said, urging lawmakers to band together to break up the industry. 

Mr. Joyner said CVS’s goal is not market concentration and argued the integrated model they’ve built “works really well for the consumer.”

He said CVS would support policy changes to increase transparency, competition and innovation, particularly among hospitals and in the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Lawmakers also found bipartisan common ground in attacking the health insurers for their excessive compensation.

“Three of the largest health insurance empires rake in nearly $1 trillion in annual revenue, pocketing tens of billions of dollars in profit,” Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, Missouri Republican, said. “For this, their executives are rewarded with tens of millions in bonuses.”