The Trump administration posted an executive order Tuesday that tells presidential advisors to come up with ideas about "how best to promote a more competitive, efficient, transparent, and resilient pharmaceutical value chain that delivers lower drug prices for Americans."

"I was encouraged to see in the president's executive order an interest in looking at multiple elements of the pharmacy value chain," Witty told the analysts during the conference call. "One of the things that has been honestly most disappointing over the last year or two is the obsession with the role of the PBM versus everybody else in the system."

The new executive order includes questions about the role of the drug manufacturers and other players in the system as well as questions about the PBMs, Witty said.

Related: Trump tells DOL to develop PBM transparency regulations to lower drug prices

Looking at the other players makes sense because "the PBM plays a unique role in trying to bring down drug prices for Americans," Witty said. "It does that at very, very narrow margins, oftentimes taking very significant risk. A PBM wins more business by successfully bringing down costs for its clients. That's not how the rest of the system operates."

The earnings: UnitedHealth executives held the analyst call, which was streamed live on the web, to go over earnings for the first quarter.

The company was the first big health insurer to report its results for the quarter.

United Health reported $6.5 billion in net income for the first quarter on $110 billion in revenue, compared with a net loss of $1.4 billion on $100 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2024.

The company ended the quarter providing or administering health coverage for 50 million people, up from 49 million people a year earlier.

Optum Rx results: Optum Rx increased the number of prescriptions managed to 408 million in the first quarter, up 3.3% from the total for the first quarter of 2024, thanks to an increase in sales. Optum Rx revenue increased 14%, to $35 billion.

"So far this year, Optum Rx is off to a strong selling season, characterized by new wins as well as high retention of long-term customers," Witty said.

The strong sales and retention rates show that most of the plans that use Optum Rx like its efforts to counter drug manufacturers' efforts to keep drug prices high, Witty said.

Group health: UnitedHealth no longer separates results for its group health business from the results for its individual commercial health insurance business.

Total commercial enrollment increased to 30 million, from 29.4 million in the year-earlier quarter.

Most of the enrollees in the "fee-based" plans appear to be in self-insured employer health plans or self-insured union health plans, and enrollment in fee-based plans increased to 21.6 million, from 20.9 million.

UnitedHealth executives spent most of the conference call talking about a surge in Medicare Advantage claims in the first quarter.

Executives said little about the commercial health business performance, except that claims there were in line with expectations and that, so far this year, commercial enrollee retention rates have been strong.