To nitpick your nitpick - this "private" insurer is actually a government contractor, administering Medicaid for individual states. > The research and developm

To nitpick your nitpick - this "private" insurer is actually a government contractor, administering Medicaid for individual states. > The research and development lab for this experiment is a pair of apartment complexes in a down-at-the-heels corner of Phoenix called Maryvale. Here, Brenner is using UnitedHealth’s money to pay for housing and support services for roughly 60 formerly homeless recipients of Medicaid, the safety-net insurance program for low-income people. Most states outsource their Medicaid programs to private companies such as UnitedHealth, paying the insurer a per-head monthly fee—typically $500 to $1,000—to manage members’ care. The company’s 6 million Medicaid members produced $43 billion in 2018, almost 20% of total revenue. ... > To keep down costs and avoid the difficulty of running a health-care system, most states contract with UnitedHealth and its competitors to establish what are called Medicaid managed-care programs. In 2017, $264 billion, almost 50¢ of every Medicaid dollar, went toward care for the 54 million people on private Medicaid plans.