UnitedHealth Used Aggressive Tactics to Boost Medicare Payments, Senate Report Finds

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

UnitedHealth Group deployed aggressive tactics to collect payment-boosting diagnoses for its Medicare Advantage members, a Senate committee investigating the company’s practices said.

In Medicare Advantage, the federal government pays insurers a lump sum to oversee medical benefits for seniors and disabled people. The government pays extra for patients with certain costly medical conditions, a process called risk adjustment.

The new report, based on a review of 50,000 pages of records UnitedHealth turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, found that the healthcare company had “turned risk adjustment into a business, which was not the original intent.”

Read more here.