University of Minnesota med school changes class after accusations of UnitedHealth ‘propaganda’

The University of Minnesota is revising a Medical School class financially supported by UnitedHealth Group after critics argued that the for-profit insurer shouldn’t have a role in educating future doctors.

The course covers a topic called “value-based care,” an umbrella term used by the federal government and health insurers to describe programs and contracts that promote improved health care quality at a lower cost.

In November, University of Minnesota Medical School leaders touted the class as an innovative partnership in which the university and the prominent Eden Prairie-based health care company jointly developed and delivered a four-week elective course on an important trend that they said could substantially improve health care.

But Dr. Allison Leopold, a recent U med school graduate, argued in a December opinion article that the course was a platform for UnitedHealth executives to present “corporate propaganda” without a means for “counterpointing or fact-checking the company’s claims.”

In December, a petition started circulating that’s drawn more than 400 signatures from students, faculty, staff and alumni at the U who say they’re “deeply alarmed by the growing entanglement between our institution and UnitedHealth Group.”

In a statement this week, the U said it will continue to consider input from UnitedHealth Group as it makes changes to the class, which the Medical School says is part of how it teaches students on the operational, administrative and financial aspects of health care.

“Based on student feedback, instructors are refining the content to focus more broadly on health system science, including value-based care,” the U said in a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

“As with any partnership, we are constantly evolving to meet the needs of the university and its students,” Wilson said in a statement.

While the U says it’s refining the course, the replacement class scheduled for next fall is “fundamentally different,” said Miranda Harris Martinez, a fourth-year medical student and petition organizer.

“We were explicitly told by medical school administration that the replacement elective will not include any sessions led or run by [UnitedHealth Group],” Harris Martinez said.

The dust-up illustrates ambivalence in Minnesota about UnitedHealth Group, the health care giant that’s been at the center of controversy over everything from allegedly excessive claims denials to operations that one congressional critic called "a monopoly on steroids.“

Value-based care is a phrase that company officials use when describing their business to investors, but Wall Street wasn’t the first to start hawking the idea, which aims to reverse financial incentives for wasteful services.

Economists think the adoption of value-based care principles could help explain why the health care spending growth rate in the United States has declined over the past two decades, with health care spending as a proportion of total national spending holding steady at about 17% from the late 2000s until 2023.

That means health care costs haven’t been going down, but their growth rate hasn’t been exceeding that of the national gross domestic product, which is the measure of the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. in a year.

Medical schools want to teach students about value-based care, but they’ve struggled to find the resources and expertise to do so, U faculty leaders wrote in November in a medical journal article about the class.

“One of the greatest challenges to implementation is the absence of a physician workforce with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to practice effectively in a system that rewards quality and cost-effectiveness over quantity and revenue maximization,” they wrote in NEJM Catalyst.

Harvard Medical School has partnered with its business school to teach value-based care, the U faculty leaders wrote, but the UnitedHealth Group partnership is apparently a first-of-its-kind partnership.

The first class was offered in fall 2024 with students visiting UnitedHealth Group’s Optum campus in Eden Prairie. Eleven company leaders met with students to discuss everything from care delivery and contract negotiation to medical group leadership and pharmacy benefits. These visits were followed by reflection sessions back on campus.

In their write-up, U faculty leaders said the idealistic nature of medical students was an issue.

“Collaboration with a for-profit company prompted skepticism for some,” they wrote. “At the same time, others aspired to executive roles within the for-profit industry. Naming this friction early ... was critical to maintaining a productive learning environment.”

The company employs or contracts with thousands of health care providers. Its Optum Health division includes more than 2,000 clinics and 370 ambulatory surgery centers across the U.S. plus more than 700 home health agencies and 265 hospice centers.

Leopold, who graduated from the U Medical School in 2025, said she participated in that first offering of the course. Over time, she became concerned that the partnership between the U and UnitedHealth represented “the insidious seedling of an unholy matrimony,” she wrote in her opinion article, which was published in January by a newsletter run by Wendell Potter, a prominent health insurance critic.

Leopold said she was told the U’s Medical School dean had negotiated to make sure the class would present a balanced picture. The sessions at Optum’s campus primarily consisted of UnitedHealth employees presenting a “company-approved slideshow,” she wrote, filled with vague corporate jargon and optimistic messaging about the future of health care.

The bulk of the learning occurred when students would “challenge the corporate newspeak,” she wrote. But she questioned why there wasn’t an expert voice challenging UnitedHealth Group’s model, particularly considering the many controversies surrounding the company.

“While this course may encourage students to think critically about the health care system, it also welcomes an onslaught of UnitedHealth corporate propaganda without a feasible means of counterpointing or fact-checking the company’s claims,” Leopold wrote.

Since 2024, UnitedHealth Group and its subsidiaries have made gifts to the University of Minnesota Foundation totaling between $250,000 and $500,000. Neither the school nor the company described the extent to which contributions were connected to the class.

In the medical journal article, U faculty leaders wrote that UnitedHealth Group covered faculty costs but did not specify a dollar value.

At a “listening session” on Dec. 9, U officials said UnitedHealth had approached the university about launching some sort of collaboration and then agreed to give a large general donation to make the course happen, said Harris Martinez, the fourth-year medical student and petition organizer.