UnitedHealth Group Inc., one of the nation’s largest health insurers with operations and customers throughout Connecticut, has agreed to pay $50 million in a settlement related to accusations it overcharged millions of Americans for health care, according to MSNBC.
The New York attorney general’s office launched an investigation after receiving hundreds of complaints about Trumbull-based Oxford Insurance and its, Minneapolis-based UnitedHealth Group, which claims to rely on “independent research from across the health care industry” to determine reimbursement rates.
But the investigation found it relies on Ingenix, a research firm owned by UnitedHealth Group, MSNBC reported today.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says Ingenix has been manipulating the numbers so insurance companies pay less. In a just-released report, he contends that Americans have been “under-reimbursed to the tune of at least hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Although UnitedHealth Group and Oxford Insurance were the only entities investigated, other major insurers use Ingenix, including Aetna, Cigna and WellPoint/Empire BlueCross BlueShield, MSNBC reported.
“This is a huge scam that affected hundreds of millions of Americans [who were] ripped off by their health insurance companies,” says Cuomo. “This was unethical, and it robbed vulnerable patients of insurance reimbursements they deserved.”
The $50 million that UnitedHealth Group will pay as the settlement will be used to create a nonprofit organization that will determine reimbursement rates for patients.
In a statement, UnitedHealth Group said: “We respectfully disagree with the New York Attorney General’s findings that we manipulated data … (or that our ownership of Ingenix was a conflict of interest.) We agreed to his settlement because it was an effective way to address any perceived conflict of interest.”
At 11 a.m., shares of UnitedHealth traded at $25.69, up 7 cents, or 0.3 percent.
