Archive Photo: The Down Jones logo average industrial securities industry that quotes on the Unitedhealthcare list is shown in Cypress, California, April 13, 2016.
Mike Blake | Reuters
UnitedHealthcare is in hot water again, since the giant of the insurance fights with a government investigation reported from its Medicare billing practices, pursues purchases of employees and possible layoffs, and publicly collides with Bill Ackman.
Those developments in recent days extend a tumultuous last year for your parent company, Unitedhealth GroupMarked by the murder of a senior executive, an expensive cyber attack against his subsidiary and high medical costs in his insurance arm. UnitedHealth Group is the largest medical care conglomerate in the US.
The actions of United Group have fallen approximately 23% in the last three months.
The action also fell 9% on Friday after a report on the probe, which was first informed by the Wall Street Journal. The Department of Justice has launched a civil fraud investigation in recent months on the billing practices of UnitedHealth for its Medicare advantage plans, according to the newspaper.
The probe specifically examines whether the diagnoses were routinely made to trigger additional payments in these plans, even in the medical groups that the insurer possesses, said the magazine. It occurs after a series of newspaper articles last year, which reported that Medicare paid United States thousands of dollars per questionable diagnoses.
Medicare Advantage plans are offered by private insurers to whom the Government pays a established rate to administer medical care for older people looking for additional benefits not covered in traditional Medicare. These plans have been a source of high medical costs in the broader insurance industry during the last year.
In a statement, UnitedHealth described the “erroneous information” of the magazine and said that the company constantly performs in the “highest levels” of the industry when it comes to government compliance reviews of Medicare Advantage's plans.
“Any suggestion that our practices are fraudulent is outrageous and false,” said the company.
In a research note on Friday, the RBC Capital Markets analyst Ben Hendrix, described the research reported as an “incremental nickname”, but emphasized that it will probably be a “long and unlikely process in our opinion to give rise to winds in winds against materials in the short term. ” He pointed out an investigation that the Department of Justice launched last year in the subsidiary of the company Optum RX for possible antitrust violations, which will similarly have an extended timeline before any resolution.
Research reports were produced two days after CNBC first reported that Unitedhealthcare offers purchases to employees and could seek dismissals if the resignation fees are not met. The measure occurs when the company tries to reduce costs through efforts such as taking advantage of digital technology.
And earlier this month, Ackman, one of the most prominent investors in the world, publicly pledged to cover the legal fees for a Texas doctor in a dispute with UnitedHealth Group for his statements that the company took it out of an operation for an operation for justify the care of a patient.
Ackman, who is CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, then withdrew an X position that criticized the insurer after the lawyers for Unitedhealth told him that the doctor's statements he had amplified on social networks were false. Ackman said he has no position in Unitedhealth.
One of his previous positions on the dispute asked the United States stock and values commission to investigate the company and suggested that the “return of the insurer is greatly exaggerated due to her denial of medically necessary procedures.”
That is similar to the public setback that the company faced after the murder of the CEO of Unitedhealthcare, Brian Thompson, in December. He unleashed a wave of anger and resentment to the insurance industry and the so -called renewed reform to avoid care denials.
UnitedHealth is also dealing with the consequences of a cyber attack in its subsidiary change Healthcare, which processes medical claims. Cyberataque compromised protected health information from around 190 million people, and UnitedHealth has paid more than $ 3 billion to affected suppliers.
UnitedHealth has said that he realized the cyber attack a year ago until Friday.
