new York
Cnn
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The CEO of Unitedhealth Group, Andrew Witty, immediately withdrew from his role for “personal reasons”, the company announced on Tuesday.
He will be replaced by Stephen Hemsley, the president and former CEO of the Board of Directors of the Health Insurer from 2006 to 2017. Witty, who led the health care giant for four years, will remain in a limited role as Hemsley’s main advisor.
“We are grateful to the stewardship of Andrew de United from Unitedhealth Group, in particular during some of the most difficult moments to which any business has ever faced,” said Hemsley in a statement, adding that the company “greatly appreciated its management and compassion as director general and as director and wishing him as well as his family.”
Witty helped direct the company following the murder of the CEO of Unitedhealthcare, Brian Thompson, last year. Unitedhealthcare is a unit of the parent company that has managed.
The deadly Thompson shooting outside a New York hotel has highlighted a significant public indignation about the health insurance industry, with a public test in a New York Times test that the American health system “is not perfect” and that the coverage decisions “are not well understood”.
Witty has also defended Unitedhealthcare, the company’s health insurance branch, although he recognized that he shares part of the responsibility for the lack of understanding of decisions on care.
Also on Tuesday, Unitedhealth Group (UNH) suspended the financial prospects for the year because the costs of the Medicare advantage “remained higher than expected”. The company plans to resume growth in 2026.
Last month, in a call with analysts following his last report on the results, Witty said that his “overall performance was frankly unusual and unacceptable”. The shares that day fell by more than 20%, its greatest drop by one day in almost three decades.
The action dropped almost 11% in pre-commercial exchanges on Tuesday.
