Bob Herman

Indiana

Healthcare Business Reporter at STAT

Health care business reporter for @statnews and its Health Care Inc. newsletter. Contact: [email protected] or bobjherman.09 on Signal.

Articles

Internal document shows how UnitedHealth executives prepared to tamp down investor unrest

3 days ago | statnews.com | Casey Ross |Tara Bannow |Bob Herman

An internal document drafted in advance of UnitedHealth Group’s shareholder meeting this week reveals how the company’s leadership — facing an extraordinary series of financial and legal challenges — sought to downplay complaints about its business practices and assure jittery investors that it will soon return to maximum profitability.
Health Care Inc.: DOGE's Brad Smith profile, Stephanie Carlton CMS interview

5 days ago | statnews.com | Bob Herman

This is the online version of STAT’s email newsletter Health Care Inc., delivered to your inbox every Monday. Sign up here. Welcome back to Health Care Inc.! I can promise you that you will never see any of these kinds of “formatting issues” here. But always feel free to format an email and send some feedback: [email protected]. The Trump administration’s U.S. DOGE Service — tasked with taking a hatchet to government spending and not looking back — was headlined by billionaire Elon Musk.
Hospitals earn big profits, insurers face ramped up Medicare Advantage audits

1 week ago | statnews.com | Bob Herman

This is the online version of STAT’s weekly email newsletter Health Care Inc. Sign up here. We’re back on this Tuesday — hope you had a good Memorial Day weekend! This Friday at 10:55 a.m. ET, I’ll be participating (virtually) on a panel run by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. We’ll be talking about all things Medicare Advantage.
Hospitals thrive in Q1, but Medicaid cuts, policy shifts cloud future

1 week ago | statnews.com | Bob Herman

Mickey Mouse wishes he had the profit margins of some hospitals. AdventHealth is currently more profitable than the average company within the S&P 500. The tax-exempt, religious system, which runs 53 hospitals across nine states, generated a 17% operating margin and 23% net margin, inclusive of investments, in the first three months of 2025. Its net margin was larger than that of Amazon, ExxonMobil, and, yes, Walt Disney.
Trump, building on Biden policy, to speed up audits of Medicare Advantage insurers

2 weeks ago | statnews.com | Bob Herman

President Trump’s federal Medicare agency will expedite audits of Medicare Advantage insurers, a move that could claw back nearly $500 million a year for taxpayers, according to previous federal estimates. However, the audits remain mired in a two-year-old lawsuit initiated by Humana, making it unclear how the Trump administration will implement its new strategy.
Health Care Inc.: UnitedHealth crash, mandatory Medicare models

2 weeks ago | statnews.com | Bob Herman

This is the online version of STAT’s email newsletter Health Care Inc., delivered to your inbox every Monday. Sign up here. I’ve always been skeptical of virtual reality headsets, and it appears my skepticism has been justified. Tell me what’s going on in your reality, virtually: [email protected] or bobjherman.09 on Signal. The past month has been a disastrous chain of events for UnitedHealth Group — which up until recently was a beloved stock on Wall Street.
UnitedHealth’s Optum working on Medicare risk scoring system that would use AI

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Bob Herman

SAN DIEGO — Optum, the health data and care provider division of UnitedHealth Group, is developing a way to calculate how sick Medicare patients are through artificial intelligence, instead of relying solely on diagnosis codes submitted by physicians.
House Democrats urge judge to advance UnitedHealth Medicare fraud case to trial

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Bob Herman

Twenty-eight Democratic members of the House of Representatives are backing the Department of Justice’s case that alleges UnitedHealth Group committed widespread Medicare Advantage fraud by not eliminating unnecessary diagnosis codes of its members.
Hospitals get to keep special payments in GOP plan to slash Medicaid

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Tara Bannow |Bob Herman

House Republicans plan to slash $715 billion from state Medicaid programs over the next decade, but their proposal spares special Medicaid payments hospitals increasingly use to pad their bottom lines. Hospitals and state governments have devised complicated, murky funding mechanisms in Medicaid under the guise of keeping hospitals whole. In most cases, they end up directing extra cash to those providers with little federal oversight.
UnitedHealth’s financial miscues, and an $800 million revenue cycle bonanza

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Bob Herman

This is the online version of STAT’s email newsletter Health Care Inc., delivered to your inbox every Monday. Sign up here. Let’s admit it, we’re all enraptured with the Chicago pope content. The deep-dish pizza memes are excellent. But it’s also great the pope actually enjoys Aurelio’s pizza, a tavern-style staple in Chicagoland. Now I need a slice (and some tips): [email protected] or bobjherman.09 on Signal.