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Health insurance stocks are calling in sick today.

Pulled lower by UnitedHealth Group’s ( UNH ) paring back of its forecasts for 2025—the news has the giant’s shares down roughly 19% in early action—the group is dropping Thursday. (Read Investopedia’s live coverage of today’s trading here .) The S&P 500’s health care sector was recently about 0.3% lower.

Several other big insurance firms joined UnitedHealth in the list of top S&P 500 decliners today. Humana ( HUM ) was off more than 8%, while Elevance Health ( ELV ) fell 5%, and CVS Health ( CVS ) slid 4%.

The news also weighed on the Dow industrials, of which UnitedHealth is a key member. The blue-chip index was recently down about 1%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were slightly higher.

Nine of the Dow's 30 components were recently lower, but only a few—UnitedHealth, Amgen ( AMGN ), and Nvidia ( NVDA )—were off more than 1%.

Some other health stocks were rising, among them pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly ( LLY ), which was lifted by drug trial news .

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