UnitedHealthcare, with its extensive national coverage and wide range of offerings, is No. 4 on Insure.com’s 2024 Best Health Insurance Companies list – earning 4.1 stars out of 5.
Written by Mel Duvall
Mel Duvall
Mel Duvall is an award-winning senior business writer and communications professional. Mel also served a three-year term on the Mount Royal University Journalism Committee.
Reviewed by John McCormick
John McCormick
John is the editorial director for CarInsurance.com, Insurance.com and Insure.com. Before joining QuinStreet, John was a deputy editor at The Wall Street Journal and had been an editor and reporter at a number of other media outlets where he covered insurance, personal finance, and technology.
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If you’re looking for an insurer with extensive national coverage and a wide range of offerings, UnitedHealthcare is worth a look.
UnitedHealthcare came in No. 4 overall in Insure.com’s ranking of the Best Health Insurance Companies of 2024 with a star rating of 4.1 (actually, a 4.11) out of 5.
It didn’t score at the top of any one category, but it did well in key areas such as affordability and renewal rate. Its ranking for customer satisfaction was in the top half of our survey and nine out of 10 customers said they would recommend the company to others. The company also was rated A+ by AM Best, which measures financial stability, and received a high National Committee for Quality Assurance rating – 3.5 out of 5 stars. NCQA evaluates healthcare organizations on, among other things, member satisfaction.
UnitedHealthcare Ratings Ranked No. 4 Overall Overall Rating: 4.1AM Best's Financial Strength Rating is an independent opinion of an insurer's financial strength and ability to meet its ongoing insurance policy and contract obligations.
Below is Insure.com’s review of the company. It’s based on third-party metrics and an in-depth survey of insurance customers. Find the full methodology here, including an explanation of our survey scores.
UnitedHealthcare plans are likely available no matter where you live across the country. And customers ranked it in the top half of companies for price and affordability. Kaiser Permanente led this category.
| Insurance company | Price/affordability stars |
|---|---|
| UnitedHealthcare | 3.95 |
| Kaiser Permanente | 4.34 |
| Aetna | 3.90 |
UnitedHealthcare doesn’t always come in as the cheapest, but its rates are often comparable to other insurers. Below is just one example of how UnitedHealthcare’s rates compare with those of other health insurers for a similar plan. These are 2024 healthcare exchange rates in North Carolina for a single, 40-year-old male in excellent health with an annual income of $70,000.
| Insurance company | Rate/Month | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| UnitedHealthcare | $531 | UHC Silver Standard HMO |
| Cigna | $560 | Connect Silver CMS Standard HMO |
| Aetna | $468 | Silver 2 HMO |
UnitedHealthcare’s customers think it does a good job of delivering customer satisfaction. Although a few companies, such as Kaiser Permanente, performed better in this category, UnitedHealthcare received 4.06 out of 5 stars. The company also did well in J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study scores for California, which measures health plans for overall customer satisfaction. It wasn’t far behind Kaiser Permanente, which had the highest J.D. Power score.
| Insurance company | Customer satisfaction stars | J.D. Power overall satisfaction score (out of 1,000) |
|---|---|---|
| UnitedHealthcare | 4.06 | 717 |
| Kaiser Permanente | 4.45 | 749 |
| Blue Shield of California | 3.80 | 722 |
UnitedHealthcare does have a lot of options. Customers ranked it well for the breadth and range of its policy offerings, which include vision, dental and accident plans. However, other companies ranked higher. BCBS of Michigan and Kaiser Permanente topped this category
| Insurance company | Percent of customers who score their insurance company highly for policy offerings |
|---|---|
| UnitedHealthcare | 76% |
| BCBS of Michigan | 88% |
| Kaiser Permanente | 86% |
Yes, they would, with 89% of its customers saying they would recommend the company to others. BCBS of Michigan and Horizon topped this category.
| Insurance company | Percent of customers who would recommend their health insurance company to others |
|---|---|
| UnitedHealthcare | 89% |
| BCBS of Michigan | 100% |
| Horizon | 97% |
Most customers believe UnitedHealthcare can be trusted. But this was a tough category in which to score extremely well. No company had more than Kaiser Permanente’s 86% trustworthy rating.
| Insurance company | Percent of customers who say they trust their health insurance company |
|---|---|
| UnitedHealthcare | 74% |
| Kaiser Permanente | 86% |
| Highmark | 83% |
Yes. When asked if they planned to renew with UnitedHealthcare, 92% said they would. Highmark and BCBS of Michigan led this category.
| Insurance company | Percent of customers who plan to renew with their health insurance company |
|---|---|
| UnitedHealthcare | 92% |
| BCBS of Michigan | 98% |
| Highmark | 98% |
UnitedHealthcare has deep technology roots. Its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, has a division called Optum, which supplies the industry with various software, analytics and pharmacy solutions. It ranked in the middle of the pack in this category. But it should be noted, none of the companies in our survey did especially well here.
| Insurance company | Percent of customers who highly rank the company’s digital experience |
|---|---|
| UnitedHealthcare | 20% |
| Kaiser Permanente | 32% |
| Humana | 19% |
The company fell to the lower half of the pack in this category. Aetna, Cigna and HCSC were among the insurers that scored better. But survey respondents didn’t give any company high marks here.
| Insurance company | Percent of customers who highly rank the company for low deductibles |
|---|---|
| UnitedHealthcare | 22% |
| Aetna, Cigna, HCSC | 31% |
| Florida Blue | 30% |
A healthcare provider network is a group of doctors, specialists and hospitals that provide services to insured members at a lower cost than providers outside the network. A strong provider network can be a key consideration when shopping for a health plan. Even though UnitedHealthcare has one of the largest provider networks, customers didn’t give it a high rank. But it should be noted that none of the insurance companies in our ranking did well here. Molina and Highmark led this category.
| Insurance company | Percent of customers who highly rank the company’s provider network |
|---|---|
| UnitedHealthcare | 22% |
| Molina | 31% |
| Highmark | 27% |
| States where UnitedHealthcare offers coverage |
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| Washington D.C. |
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UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurance provider in the country by membership, but surprisingly, its roots don’t go back as far as some of its other well-known competitors. In 1974, Richard Taylor Burke founded Charter Med Inc. in Minnetonka, Minn. In 1977, the UnitedHealthcare Corp. was created to reorganize the company and became the parent of Charter Med. It became an acquirer of other healthcare companies, fueling rapid growth over the next few decades. In 2005 it acquired PacifiCare Health Systems, which came with a pharmaceutical operation. That business was later rebranded OptumRx. It now boasts about 50 million members and has a provider network that includes some 7,000 hospitals and more than 1.3 million physicians and other healthcare professionals. Its various health offerings include individual, family, employer and Medicare and Medicaid.
Sources:
UnitedHealthcare website and UnitedHealth Group Corporate information.
Accessed January 2024.
Insure.com in the fall of 2023 surveyed more than 1,750 insurance consumers (1,433 people with health insurance). The survey was conducted by online market research company Slice MR.
Respondents were asked to name their insurer and then grade it in a number of categories, including ease of service and policy offerings. The percentage of respondents who said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their insurer is presented in the results.
In addition, the editors also created star rankings for each company. Respondents were asked to pick their insurer’s top three attributes out of the more than the dozen they were presented – including categories such as customer satisfaction and price/affordability. The number of responses for each of those attributes was totaled and then divided by the number of each company’s customers who responded to that survey question to create the star ranking.
Respondents were also asked if they would recommend their insurer to someone else and if they planned to renew their policies. The percentage who said yes is presented in the results.
They also were given the statement “I trust my insurance company” and asked if they strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. The percentage of those who said they agreed or strongly agreed is presented in the results.
The editors compiled the survey results and then selected – based on the number of survey responses – the top companies for further evaluation. Insure.com needed 30 or more of a health insurer’s customers to respond to the survey for a company to be included in the ranking.
They then collected AM Best financial stability ratings and National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) ratings, which evaluate health plans on, among other things, member satisfaction.
Each insurer was awarded from 1 to 5 stars. No insurer in our star ranking received less than 1 star and the highest possible ranking is 5 stars.
On company review pages, the editors compared the profiled insurers in various categories against the leaders in that category or against other top insurers that match up well against the profiled company in terms of size and/or coverage area.
