UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) is the latest health care payer to highlight the impact of skyrocketing behavioral health utilization.

Specifically, UnitedHealth Group executives said Tuesday that second-quarter financial shortcomings were partly linked to “unanticipated” medical costs that ended up being $6.5 billion more than originally forecast. That figure was largely inflated by behavioral health utilization, according to the executives.

“This is a challenging year for our enterprise, but I feel strongly we can overcome these challenges as we’ve done before. I can see the depth of the commitment of our team,” Stephen Hemsley, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, said during Tuesday’s Q2 2025 earnings call. “We are regaining the intensity, the precision and the executional disciplines required to perform consistently and reliably.”

Hemsley was named CEO in May after UnitedHealth Group’s former CEO, Andrew Witty, stepped down.

Tim Noel, CEO of UnitedHealthcare – UnitedHealth Group’s insurance business – added additional context around behavioral health utilization costs.

“Elevated trends are apparent and further affected by increasing and unanticipated acceleration of the cost and behavioral health, where the trend is running at 20%, as well as in pharmacy and home health,” Noel said on the call. “We anticipate the existing rate and acuity mismatch will extend well into next year beyond these segment-specific factors.”

Noel took the helm of UnitedHealthcare in January after the December 2024 murder of former CEO Brian Thompson.

For Q2 2025, UnitedHealth Group reported quarterly revenues of $111.6 billion, a more than 12% increase compared to the same quarter a year ago.

UnitedHealthcare posted Q2 2025 revenue of $86.1 billion, a more than 16% increase compared to last year’s second quarter.

Optum Health, the company’s payvider arm, also fell below second-quarter expectations. Optum reported Q2 2025 revenue of $67.2 billion, a nearly 7% increase compared to $62.9 billion in Q2 2024.

Optum CEO Dr. Patrick Conway noted that the company expects “meaningful improvement” in operations and anticipates earnings growth for 2026, but stated there will be “a longer path to recovery” for its value-based care segment.

Conway was appointed Optum CEO in May after its former CEO, Heather Cianfrocco, transitioned to being UnitedHealth Group’s executive vice president of governance, compliance and information security.

“The elevated medical trend we recognized in the second quarter was exacerbated by insufficient pricing within UnitedHealthcare and other payer partners pulling through in the form of insufficient capitation rates for Optum,” Conway said.

Looking ahead, other headwinds for UnitedHealth Group and its subsidiaries will likely include changes to Medicare Advantage (MA), the privatized version of traditional Medicare, and Medicaid. Changes around the Affordable Care Act and the health insurance marketplace may also impact UnitedHealth Group, according to the company.

Despite rising medical costs and broader changes to the U.S. health insurance landscape, UnitedHealth Group remains focused on building out its care delivery operations, which include behavioral health care, to support value-based care.

“It’s about patient need. For value-based care, we need clinical assets. We need assets in the home, and capabilities and clinicians in the home,” Conway explained. “We need mental and behavioral. We need specialty care. We need ambulatory surgical centers. You need serious illness care. You need the breadth.”