Latest news with #BrianThompson
Toronto Sun
3 days ago
- General
- Toronto Sun
Trains remain halted one day after CN derailment near Brantford
Published Jul 26, 2025 • 1 minute read CN officials examine freight cars on a bridge in Paris, Ont., after about 24 freight cars and one locomotive derailed on Friday July 25, 2025. Photo by Brian Thompson / Brantford Expositor/Postmedia Network Via Rail says trains continue to be halted one day after a Canadian National Railway Co. train derailment of about two dozen railcars and one locomotive. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account A spokesperson for Via says traffic near Brantford, Ont., remains halted due to the derailment, and it is waiting for line clearance from the infrastructure owner. CN spokesman Tom Bateman says crews with the company safely restored train service Saturday morning at the site of the derailment. However, he says workers will remain in the area for several days, and delays in train traffic may be necessary to allow crews to continue working safely in the area. Bateman says there were no injuries, leaks or fires reported, and the cause of the derailment remains under investigation. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said Friday it was sending a team of investigators to Paris, Ont., to gather evidence and determine what happened. Columnists Toronto & GTA Columnists Sunshine Girls Columnists
CNBC
4 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
Kelly Evans: The implosion of the health insurers
It's pretty shocking just how poorly the health insurance names are trading. Centene--a major Obamacare and Medicaid insurer--is down Its stock price after earnings this morning hit 2014 levels. Molina, which is smaller but has higher Medicaid concentration, is down 48%. Humana, which was trading at $550 three years ago, is a $235 stock now. And it doesn't stop there. This comes on top of the higher-profile problems plaguing the country's biggest insurer, UnitedHealth. Those shares are down 56% from their all-time high last November, which came just a month before executive Brian Thompson was shot and killed. Yesterday, the company confirmed it's cooperating with a federal probe into its Medicare billing practices. It might be tempting to dismiss UNH's problems as company-specific, but that wouldn't explain why rival Elevance (formerly Anthem) is also down 29% this month, and 50% below its September all-time high. "This is the worst the Healthcare sector has ever traded," lamented Mizuho strategist Jared Holz, noting this could be the third straight year the sector underperforms the S&P 500 by 20% or more. "JOT," he quipped. "Just Own Tech." So what in the world is going on? Is it just a coincidence that this industry is seeing declines of a magnitude we've rarely seen outside of a financial crisis or market bubble popping? These are hardly overvalued goofball start-ups, memecoins, or overly leveraged financial institutions. They are massive, highly regulated, utility-esque pillars of the U.S. healthcare system. If there is a common thread, it's basically that more people are using their health insurance now, after delaying usage during the pandemic, which made the companies back then appear more profitable than they really were. Add to that federal investigations into profit centers like Medicare and Medicare Advantage. And one expert I recently spoke with even muses that perhaps hospitals are now using AI to get insurance companies to approve and pay for more patient procedures. For Medicaid and Obamacare, you also now have the government pulling back on subsidies and support. The GOP's megabill is expected to "significantly reduce" the number of people on Obamacare next year, per The Wall Street Journal. Hence the massive hit to those insurers this month. Centene shares did reverse higher this morning after the CEO on their earnings call said she believes they will "reprice their marketplace business" for "meaningful margin improvement in 2026." But that, of course, implies price hikes for customers on the other end. And with health insurance costs running nearly triple overall inflation over the past two decades, it's unclear how well that will go over. And yet, how many options do patients who need health coverage really have to turn elsewhere? It is precisely because of their utility-like nature that investor Bill Smead told us on Wednesday he has begun adding UnitedHealth to his U.S. Value Fund. Chris Grisanti of MAI Capital Management has also been a buyer of that name. "The government needs these companies to exist," Smead said on Wednesday, which makes it hard to bet a lot more against them from here. And that's probably true. But to put it differently, as my colleague Brian Sullivan quipped--does that also mean the health insurers, to borrow that dreaded phrase, have now become "too big to fail"? I'll ponder that one while I'm out utilizing their coverage on maternity leave. See you all sometime in roughly mid-November, God willing! Kelly Twitter: @KellyCNBC Instagram: @realkellyevans
India Today
5 days ago
- Business
- India Today
UnitedHealth probed over medicare billing, says it's cooperating with DOJ
UnitedHealth Group says it is cooperating with federal criminal and civil investigations involving its market-leading Medicare business. The health care giant said on Thursday that it had contacted the Department of Justice after reviewing media reports about investigations into certain elements of its business.'(UnitedHealth) has a long record of responsible conduct and effective compliance,' the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission this year, The Wall Street Journal said federal officials had launched a civil fraud investigation into how the company records diagnoses that lead to extra payments for its Medicare Advantage, or MA, plans. Those are privately run versions of the government's Medicare coverage program mostly for people ages 65 and over. The company's UnitedHealthcare business covers more than 8 million people as the nation's largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans. The business has been under pressure in recent quarters due to rising care use and rate Journal said in February, citing anonymous sources, that the probe focused on billing practices in recent paper has since said that a federal criminal health care-fraud unit was investigating how the company used doctors and nurses to gather diagnoses that bolster said in the filing Thursday that it 'has full confidence in its practices and is committed to working cooperatively with the Department throughout this process.'UnitedHealth Group Inc. runs one of the nation's largest health insurance and pharmacy benefits management businesses. It also operates a growing Optum business that provides care and technology raked in more than $400 billion in revenue last year to come in third in the Fortune 500 list of biggest U.S. companies. Its share price topped $630 last fall to reach a new all-time the stock has mostly shed value since December, when UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in midtown Manhattan on his way to the company's annual investor meeting. A suspect, Luigi Mangione, has been charged in connection with the April, shares plunged some more after the company cut its forecast due to a spike in healthcare use. A month later, former CEO Andrew Witty resigned, and the company withdrew its forecast entirely, saying that medical costs from new Medicare Advantage members were higher than stock price was down more than 3%, or $10.73, to $281.78 on Thursday afternoon. That represents a 55% drop from the all-time high it hit in November. Broader indexes were mixed. UnitedHealth will report its second-quarter results next Tuesday.- Ends
Chicago Tribune
5 days ago
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
UnitedHealth says it is under a federal investigation and cooperating
UnitedHealth Group says it is cooperating with federal criminal and civil investigations involving its market-leading Medicare business. The health care giant said Thursday that it had contacted the Department of Justice after reviewing media reports about investigations into certain elements of its business. '(UnitedHealth) has a long record of responsible conduct and effective compliance,' the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal said federal officials had launched a civil fraud investigation into how the company records diagnoses that lead to extra payments for its Medicare Advantage, or MA, plans. Those are privately run versions of the government's Medicare coverage program mostly for people ages 65 and over. The company's UnitedHealthcare business covers more than 8 million people as the nation's largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans. The business has been under pressure in recent quarters due to rising care use and rate cuts. The Journal said in February, citing anonymous sources, that the probe focused on billing practices in recent months. The paper has since said that a federal criminal health care-fraud unit was investigating how the company used doctors and nurses to gather diagnoses that bolster payments. UnitedHealth said in the filing Thursday that it 'has full confidence in its practices and is committed to working cooperatively with the Department throughout this process.' UnitedHealth Group Inc. runs one of the nation's largest health insurance and pharmacy benefits management businesses. It also operates a growing Optum business that provides care and technology support. UnitedHealth raked in more than $400 billion in revenue last year to come in third in the Fortune 500 list of biggest U.S. companies. Its share price topped $630 last fall to reach a new all-time high. But the stock has mostly shed value since December, when UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in midtown Manhattan on his way to the company's annual investor meeting. A suspect, Luigi Mangione, has been charged in connection with the shooting. In April, shares plunged some more after the company cut its forecast due to a spike in health care use. A month later, former CEO Andrew Witty resigned, and the company withdrew its forecast entirely, saying that medical costs from new Medicare Advantage members were higher than expected. The stock price was down more than 3%, or $10.73, to $281.78 Thursday afternoon. That represents a 55% drop from the all-time high it hit in November. Broader indexes were mixed. UnitedHealth will report its second-quarter results next Tuesday.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
UnitedHealth stock sinks 4.7% after company confirms DOJ investigation into Medicare billing practices
UnitedHealth (UNH) stock fell 4.7% on Thursday after the insurance giant disclosed in a regulatory filing that it is facing an investigation from the Department of Justice into its Medicare billing practices. Following news reports from the Wall Street Journal about insurance billing techniques used by UnitedHealth and other large medical insurers, the Justice Department's healthcare fraud unit began making criminal and civil requests of the company, according to the filing. "The Company has full confidence in its practices and is committed to working cooperatively with the Department throughout this process," UnitedHealth said in its disclosure. "The Company has a long record of responsible conduct and effective compliance." The insurer also said it has "proactively launched its own initiative to conduct third party reviews of policies, practices, and associated processes and performance metrics for risk assessment coding, managed care practices, and pharmacy services." The Wall Street Journal's reporting, first published in December 2024, documented several ways in which United and other major insurers have received billions of dollars in extra payments from the federal Medicare Advantage system, which allows approved private companies to provide health benefits in lieu of the federally managed Medicare system. These include companies taking on extra, and sometimes incorrect, diagnoses to patient profiles when those rulings had not been made by the doctors actually treating the patients, allowing the insurers access to extra payouts from the Medicare program, among other tactics. The health insurance giant has been facing a probe from the Justice Department into possible Medicare fraud since at least the summer of 2024, according to the Wall Street Journal's reporting. UnitedHealth has been embroiled in a series of leadership controversies and financial setbacks over the last year, with its stock falling about 50% over that period. In May 2024, the company and several senior executives — including founder and group chairman Stephen Helmsley, and then-UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — were sued by a Hollywood-based pension fund for insider trading in a lawsuit alleging executives sold more than $100 million in stock after the company found out it was facing an antitrust probe by the Department of Justice but before the investigation was publicly disclosed. Seven months later, in December, Thompson was shot and killed in Manhattan the morning of the company's annual investor meeting. Reactions across the country centered on anger toward UnitedHealthcare over its treatment of people on its insurance, including denial of claims. When the company reported earnings a month later, the results showed revenue missed analyst estimates and the insurer's medical care ratio — which measures how much of collected premiums are spent by the insurer on medical care — spiked. The stock dropped around 5% after the release. Three months later, the company's first quarter earnings report saw it slash its adjusted earnings per share guidance and sent shares down over 22%, its worst single-day performance since 1998. The next month, UnitedHealth's CEO Andrew Witty abruptly stepped down while the company pulled its annual forecast. Helmsley, who had previously moved to a role as group chairman, was quickly appointed as CEO to replace Witty. He was granted a pay package that includes a $1 million salary and $60 million in stock options that will vest after three years. That same month, the company suspended its annual forecast entirely, sending shares tumbling by roughly 16%. And in a final blow, UnitedHealth accidentally leaked a memo to STAT News in June that listed internal talking points on topics including the use of AI models to deny claims. Jake Conley is a breaking news reporter covering US equities for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @byjakeconley or email him at Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest stock market news and events moving stock prices
