Landowner family collects record rent from health empire

One of London's largest landowning families collected its highest-ever rent from its Marylebone property empire last year. The family's involvement in the health sector is characterized as a 'cradle-to-grave' consolidation of the US healthcare industry, aiming to create a monopoly that dictates health treatments and outcomes.

UnitedHealth Group (UHG), a major player in this consolidation, reported revenues of $80.1 billion for the first quarter of 2022, a 14.2% increase compared to the same period in 2021. Its subsidiary, Optum, serves 120 million individual consumers and 80% of health plans, while OptumInsight provides services to 90% of US hospitals. The article highlights a pending antitrust suit against UHG's $13.5 billion purchase of Change Health, arguing that UHG could misuse the data facilitated by Change Health, which processed over 15 billion healthcare transactions and nearly $1.5 trillion in adjudicated claims in fiscal year 2020. This consolidation is compared to trends seen in agriculture and banking, with concerns that it could lead to a de facto public-private partnership for universal healthcare, potentially enabling population control through data misuse.