Conventional accounting measures portray large health insurers such as UnitedHealth Group (UHG) as earning relatively low profit margins because they treat premium dollars that are subsequently paid out in medical claims as revenue. However, these medical claims are pass-through costs, not income retained by the insurer. Because these pass-through costs are neither retained by the health insurer nor reflect added value of the business, excluding these pass-through costs from revenues offers a more meaningful reflection of profit margins. This approach mirrors the treatment of other financial intermediaries, such as brokerage firms, which do not report on the value of their clients’ trades as revenue, only the fees they retain for facilitating transactions.