Largest health insurance companies in U.S. 2023, by membership

The largest health insurance companies in the U.S. include big names such as Kaiser Permanente , Elevance Health and UnitedHealthcare Group. As of 2023 the largest health insurance company in the U.S. was Kaiser Permanente with approximately 8.8 million members. However, UnitedHealthcare was the largest health insurance company in the U.S. by revenue. Elevance Health (Anthem) was the second largest at that time with almost 5.8 million members. Health insurance is an important part of the health care landscape in the U.S. and enrollment has been on the rise since the passing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 by U.S. President Barack Obama.

Health insurance in the U.S.

The health insurance industry in the United States is a combination of both private and publicly funded schemes that provide a range of health services to individuals and families. The overall health care administration costs and net cost of private health insurance in the U.S. has increased rapidly since the early 2000s. In recent years, the U.S. has seen a rise in the cost of monthly health insurance premiums. In 2019, the average monthly health insurance premium in the individual market earned an insurer over 560 U.S. dollars on average.

Health care costs

However, despite the combination of private and public funding, the U.S. health system has some of the highest per capita costs globally. The reason behind the increase and difference in health care costs in the U.S. is said to be a combination of doctors’ earnings, the cost of diagnostics and cost of health care administration and overhead. Compared to other developed countries such as France, Germany and Canada, the U.S. spends significantly more of it’s GDP on health care costs. As an example, the cost of a heart bypass surgery in the United States in 2019 was over 4 times as expensive as a heart bypass surgery in Israel.