Richard Taylor Burke (born 1943) is an American businessman and the founder of UnitedHealth Group, a large managed healthcare and insurance company.
[1] Burke founded UnitedHealth Group and played a significant role in the development of the HMO and Physicians Health Plan (PHP) while he worked at InterStudy, a think tank focused on health care with Dr. Paul M. Ellwood Jr.[2][3][4] Burke took the view that healthcare should be economized and hospital admissions should be limited, sometimes at the protest of doctors.
[7] After a time, the matter was resolved in 1987 by a mediator, and Burke left prominent roles in the companies over the next few years.
[11] In 2024, Burke was featured in the song "United Health" by the folk-rock social commentator Jesse Welles.
It excoriated corporate healthcare profiteering, referring to Burke as the "Warren Buffet of health, the Jeff Bezos of fear.