UnitedHealthcare health insurance review and ratings 2024

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.

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Our take

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
UnitedHealthcare Ratings
Overall Rating: 4.1
Price/Affordability: 4.0
NCQA: 3.48
Customer Satisfaction: 4.1
AM Best Rating: A+

Pros and Cons

Pros:
  • Size matters, and UnitedHealthcare certainly has it with a large membership base and coast-to-coast coverage
  • The vast majority of customers said they’ll renew their insurance
Cons:
  • It didn’t score as high as some of its competitors for policy offerings
  • Its provider network is big, but customers didn’t rank it all that highly

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.

How much does UnitedHealthcare insurance cost?

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 companyPrice/affordability stars
UnitedHealthcare3.95
Kaiser Permanente4.34 
Aetna3.90

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 companyRate/MonthPlan
UnitedHealthcare$531UHC Silver Standard HMO 
Cigna $560Connect Silver CMS Standard HMO
Aetna$468Silver 2 HMO

How UnitedHealthcare scores for customer satisfaction

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 companyCustomer satisfaction starsJ.D. Power overall satisfaction score (out of 1,000)
UnitedHealthcare4.06717
Kaiser Permanente4.45749
Blue Shield of California3.80722

How UnitedHealthcare scores for policy offerings

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 companyPercent of customers who score their insurance company highly for policy offerings
UnitedHealthcare76%
BCBS of Michigan88%
Kaiser Permanente86%

Would current customers recommend UnitedHealthcare to others?

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 companyPercent of customers who would recommend their health insurance company to others
UnitedHealthcare89%
BCBS of Michigan100%
Horizon 97%

How trustworthy is UnitedHealthcare?

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 companyPercent of customers who say they trust their health insurance company
UnitedHealthcare74%
Kaiser Permanente86%
Highmark83%

Do current UnitedHealthcare customers plan to renew?

Yes. When asked if they planned to renew with UnitedHealthcare, 92% said they would. Highmark and BCBS of Michigan led this category.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who plan to renew with their health insurance company
UnitedHealthcare92%
BCBS of Michigan98%
Highmark98%

How UnitedHealthcare scores for digital experience

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 companyPercent of customers who highly rank the company’s digital experience
UnitedHealthcare20%
Kaiser Permanente32%
Humana19%

How UnitedHealthcare scores for low deductibles

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 companyPercent of customers who highly rank the company for low deductibles
UnitedHealthcare22%
Aetna, Cigna, HCSC31%
Florida Blue30%

How UnitedHealthcare scores for its provider network

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 companyPercent of customers who highly rank the company’s provider network
UnitedHealthcare22%
Molina31%
Highmark27%

UnitedHealthcare health insurance coverage options

  1. Insurance for families and individuals
  2. Health insurance via employers
  3. Medicare and Medicaid plans
  4. Student plans
  5. International plans and plans for multinational companies
  6. Pharmacy plans

Additional UnitedHealthcare services

  1. Dental 
  2. Vision
  3. Health Savings Accounts
  4. Short-term medical

States where UnitedHealthcare offers coverage

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Table
States where UnitedHealthcare offers coverage
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
Washington D.C.
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY
Available
Not available

Company background

UnitedHealthcare

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.

Resources and Methodology

Sources:

UnitedHealthcare website and UnitedHealth Group Corporate information.
Accessed January 2024.

Methodology

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.

With the help of Prof. David Marlett, Ph.D., managing director of the Brantley Risk and Insurance Center at Appalachian State University, the editors created a rating system to determine which insurance companies were best in each sector. For health insurers, we used the following weights to calculate the overall score for each company:

  • Survey – 60% of total score (10% for customer satisfaction, 10% trustworthiness, 10% for recommending the carrier to another, 10% if a respondent would renew with their current insurer, and 20% if they consider their insurer the best for affordability)
  • AM Best – 25% of total score
  • NCQA – 15% of total score

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.

author image
Mel Duvall
Contributing Researcher

 
  

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.

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