{"id":9927,"date":"2026-01-23T02:45:49","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T02:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/23\/health-insurance-execs-blame-high-costs-hospitals-doctors-pharma\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T02:45:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T02:45:49","slug":"health-insurance-execs-blame-high-costs-hospitals-doctors-pharma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/23\/health-insurance-execs-blame-high-costs-hospitals-doctors-pharma\/","title":{"rendered":"STAT+: Health insurance execs shift blame for costly, confusing health care system"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    STAT+: Health insurance execs shift blame for costly, confusing health care system<br \/>\n \t<BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/BR><br \/>\n    <!-- no image --><br \/>\n \t<BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/BR><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Health insurance executives agree that the U.S. health care system is overpriced, wasteful, and confusing. And they also agree that those problems are someone else\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, the CEOs of America\u2019s largest health insurance companies appeared before Congress to both justify their current practices and push their visions for reshaping the health system. The leaders of UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, Elevance Health, Cigna, and Ascendiun blamed the high prices of hospitals, doctors, and prescription drugs and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2025\/06\/23\/health-insurers-pledge-to-cut-down-prior-authorization-requests-speed-up-processing-will-it-help\/\">reiterated their promises<\/a> to make insurance approvals quicker and invest in \u201cvalue-based care.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are dissatisfied with the status quo in health care, and know we must all do better,\u201d UnitedHealth CEO Steve Hemsley told members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. He then explained that health insurance is so expensive because hospital and drug spending \u201chas soared at three times the rate of inflation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2026\/01\/22\/health-insurance-execs-blame-high-costs-hospitals-doctors-pharma\/?utm_campaign=rss\">Continue to STAT+ to read the full story\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> \t<BR><br \/>\n <BR><\/BR><br \/>\n    Bob Herman and Daniel Payne<br \/>\n \t<BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/BR><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2026\/01\/22\/health-insurance-execs-blame-high-costs-hospitals-doctors-pharma\/?utm_campaign=rss\">Go to statnews<\/a><br \/>\n \t<BR><br \/>\n <BR><\/BR><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STAT+: Health insurance execs shift blame for costly, confusing health care system Health insurance executives agree that the U.S. health care system is overpriced, wasteful, and confusing. And they also agree that those problems are someone else\u2019s fault. On Thursday, the CEOs of America\u2019s largest health insurance companies appeared before Congress to both justify their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2158,4064,2288,2212,2213,2176,2151,2144,2152],"tags":[2150],"class_list":["post-9927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-health-care-costs","category-health-insurance","category-hospitals","category-insurance","category-pharma","category-policy","category-politics","category-stat","tag-statnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}