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UnitedHealthcare health insurance review and ratings 2025

UnitedHealthcare, with its extensive national coverage and high trustworthiness score, tied for No. 1 on Insure.com’s 2025 Best Health Insurance Companies list – earning 4.17 stars out of 5.

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Our take

If you’re looking for a trustworthy insurer with extensive national coverage, UnitedHealthcare is worth considering.

UnitedHealthcare earned the top spot overall (tied with Kaiser Permanente) in Insure.com’s ranking of the Best Health Insurance Companies of 2025 with a star rating of 4.17 out of 5. 

In our survey of insurance consumers, UnitedHealthcare scored at the top in more than one category – including being rated the most trustworthy. The company also scored well in the renewal category. However, UnitedHealthcare didn’t do nearly as well in the categories for low deductibles and needing referrals.

The company earned an A+ (Superior) rating from AM Best, which measures financial stability, and received a high National Committee for Quality Assurance rating – 3.42 out of 5 stars. NCQA evaluates healthcare organizations on, among other things, member satisfaction.

Among companies we ranked, UnitedHealthcare received one of the best complaint index scores from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a 0.24. The NAIC ranks insurers by the number of customer complaints they receive. A market average is 1.0, and anything less indicates the carrier receives fewer complaints than typical for a company its size.

UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare Ratings
Overall Rating: 4.17
Price/Affordability: 4.05
NCQA: 3.42
Customer Satisfaction: 4.09
AM Best Rating: A+
Effective date:

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
  • The insurer had the highest trustworthiness score among the companies we ranked
Cons:
  • It didn’t score as high as some of its competitors for low deductibles and for needing referrals.
  • It didn’t receive a great rating for its digital experience

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 high for affordability – with 4-plus stars. But some other competitors did better. Molina led this category.

CompanyPrice/affordability stars
UnitedHealthcare4.05
Molina4.54
Aetna4.14

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 some UnitedHealthcare HMO rates compare with those of other health insurers for a similar plan. These are 2025 healthcare exchange rates in New Mexico for a single, 40-year-old male in excellent health with an annual income of $70,000.

CompanyRate/MonthPlan
UnitedHealthcare$502UHC Clear Cost Silver
Molina$503Molina Clear Cost Silver
Health Care Service Corp.$492Blue Cross Blue Shield Clear Cost Silver Plan

How UnitedHealthcare scores for customer satisfaction

UnitedHealthcare’s customers think it does a decent job of delivering customer satisfaction, but in this category it finished in the second half of the insurers we ranked. Molina and Elevance scored the highest for customer satisfaction in our 2025 study.

In J.D. Power’s 2024 U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study, UnitedHealthcare saw varying scores based on region. The company ranked above average in roughly half of the states where it sells coverage. In the other locations, it was rated below average. In California, the average score was 578.

CompanyCustomer satisfaction starsJ.D. Power overall satisfaction score in CA (out of 1,000)
UnitedHealthcare4.09558
Kaiser Permanente4.11630
Aetna4.07555

How UnitedHealthcare scores for policy offerings

UnitedHealthcare scored near the bottom of our 2025 study for policy offerings. Only 77% of respondents said the company had a good breadth of policy offerings. The leaders in this category were Molina and Elevance.

CompanyPercent of customers who score their insurance company highly for policy offerings
UnitedHealthcare77%
Molina92%
Elevance88%

Would current customers recommend UnitedHealthcare to others?

Yes, they would, with 94% of its customers saying they would recommend the company to others. The only insurance company that scored higher than UnitedHealthcare in this category was Highmark.

CompanyPercent of customers who would recommend their health insurance company to others
UnitedHealthcare94%
Highmark100%
Kaiser Permanente88%

How trustworthy is UnitedHealthcare?

UnitedHealthcare is the most trustworthy health insurance company in 2025, according to the insurance customers we surveyed. Humana came in second in this category

CompanyPercent of customers who say they trust their health insurance company
UnitedHealthcare89%
Humana85%
Molina78%

Do current UnitedHealthcare customers plan to renew?

Yes. When asked if they planned to renew with UnitedHealthcare, 88.7% of customers said they would. Only Molina had a higher score, 89.2%, for renewals.

CompanyPercent of customers who plan to renew with their health insurance company
UnitedHealthcare89%
Molina89%
Highmark77%

How UnitedHealthcare scores for digital experience

UnitedHealthcare didn’t score well for digital experience. Only 74% of customers were satisfied with the company’s mobile and web capabilities. Molina led this category. 

CompanyPercent of customers who highly rank the company’s digital experience
UnitedHealthcare74%
Molina87%
Humana84%

How UnitedHealthcare scores for low deductibles

A deductible is the amount of money you have to pay out-of-pocket for health care services before your health insurance plan begins to pay. The winner in this category was Molina, followed by Humana. Other companies did better than UnitedHealthcare in this category as well.

CompanyPercent of customers who highly rank the company for low deductibles
UnitedHealthcare68%
Molina87%
Humana85%

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 especially high marks here. Elevance and Humana took the top spots in this category.

CompanyPercent of customers who highly rank the company’s provider network
UnitedHealthcare77%
Elevance88%
Humana85%

UnitedHealthcare health insurance coverage options

  1. Insurance for families and individuals
  2. Health insurance via employers
  3. Medicare and Medicaid plans

Additional UnitedHealthcare services

  1. Dental 
  2. Vision
  3. Short-term medical

States where UnitedHealthcare offers coverage

Graph
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
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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 “UnitedHealthcare website and UnitedHealth Group” Accessed March 2025.

Methodology

Insure.com in the fall of 2024 surveyed more than 1,750 insurance consumers (almost 1,500 of which had health insurance). The survey was conducted by online market research company Slice MR.

Respondents were asked to name their health insurer and then grade it in a number of categories, including:

  • Customer satisfaction
  • Ease of service
  • Policy offerings
  • The cost of insurance/affordability
  • Low deductible
  • Preferred providers available
  • Not needing a referral

The percentage of respondents who said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their insurer is presented in the results.

We then asked respondents to provide a yes or no response to indicate their agreement with the following statements:

  1. I plan to keep my coverage with my current health insurance company
  2. I would recommend my health insurance company to others
  3. I trust my health insurance company

The percentage of respondents who said yes 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.

We then collected data from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), which evaluates and rates health plans, and National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ complaint data, which ranks a company by the number of customer complaints it receives. The Insure.com team identified the NAIC codes of each underwriting company for each carrier and calculated a weighted average complaint index, weighted by the annual written premium. The associated NAIC complaint index score was used in the calculations.

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 life insurers, we took the following and gave each a weight.

  • Survey: 60% of the total score (10% customer satisfaction, 10% recommended, 10% policy retention, 10% trust, and 20% affordability)
  • NCQA: 25% of total score
  • NAIC: 15% of total score

Each insurer was awarded between half a star and 5 stars. No company in the ranking received less than half a star in any category, and 5 stars was the most any insurer could receive.

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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