I'm Jane Marie, and this is the dream.

Last fall, we brought you the first episode of a show we've been working on called Sick Care, hosted by Sean Cannon.

Sick Care is based on reporting by a small-town newspaper guide named Adam Stone, who, more than a few times now has broken alarming news about United Health and its subsidiaries. United Health Group is massive,

the seventh largest company in the world, worth almost half a trillion dollars. You've

surely heard of it, especially after its CEO, Brian Thompson, was murdered in Manhattan in 2024.

But Adams' reporting began years before that.

United Health is an insurance company, a health care service provider, meaning it owns

hospitals and employees doctors, under the name Optum.

It handles prescription drug coverage, services Medicare coverage under Medicare Advantage.

Optum Insight does analytics and software for the medical industry.

It also has arms that include data collection, billing, you name it.

This is what you hear referred to as vertical integration, where healthcare services

from on-the-ground providers to the buildings they work and to the software they use to track

and build the insurance you use to pay for those services

are all the same company, essentially.

United Health is the definition of a behemoth.

And many would say that what it's doing is probably illegal.

Music say that what it's doing is probably illegal. Today I'm talking to Adam about what he's found in his reporting,

which is a massive trove of unbelievable stories he published over at a small town newspaper

that he owns and reports for. And I have to

stress this. I think it's important. This is a real old-timey operation, which I have a ton of

respect for. Boots on the ground reporting, no giant corporate interests, news for news sake.

...