UnitedHealth Group’s stock price surged on Friday, August 15, after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway made a new round of investment in the troubled healthcare giant, boosting investor confidence.
The healthcare stock soared by 12% on that day, marking its best single-day performance in five years. As a barometer of the industry, UnitedHealth Group contributed about 209 points to the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the opening on Friday.
The rise was attributed to Berkshire Hathaway’s increased holding of the stock. In a filing submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, Berkshire revealed that as of June 30, the company held 5.04 million shares of UnitedHealth Group, worth about $1.57 billion. Buffett had previously held about 1.18 million shares of the company’s stock from 2006 to 2009, before selling them all in 2010.
Other regulatory filings from Thursday showed that several other prominent hedge funds also bought shares of UnitedHealth Group, including David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management, Lone Pine Capital, and Two Sigma Investments.
Berkshire Hathaway has been purchasing UnitedHealth Group’s stock since the fourth quarter of last year. It had requested regulatory agencies to allow it to make these purchases in secret to avoid stock price spikes.
The regulatory filings also indicated that Berkshire sold its investment in T-Mobile US and reduced its long-term holdings in Apple and Bank of America.
As of Thursday’s close, UnitedHealth Group’s stock price has fallen by nearly 46% in 2025. As the largest private health insurance company in the United States, the group has become the focus of public dissatisfaction with rising healthcare costs. Currently, UnitedHealth Group is under investigation by the US Department of Justice for its handling of the Medicare program, including criminal and civil investigations. The company confirmed this in late July and stated its cooperation with the Department of Justice.
Since the assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, on a Manhattan street in New York last December, the group has been in turmoil. This event has not only impacted the entire health insurance industry but also led to the public venting their pent-up frustrations with health insurance companies in recent years.