k28 casino UnitedHealthcare Has Faced Scrutiny Over Denying Claims
As one of the nation’s largest health insurers, covering more than 50 million people, UnitedHealthcare has battled a range of complaints and investigations from patients, doctors and lawmakers for its denial of medical claims.
Those practices may face new scrutiny after law enforcement officials said that the bullet casings found at the site of the killing of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson on Wednesday appeared to have messages, including the words “deny” and “delay,” written on them. The shooter’s motive and identity still remained unknown on Thursday, and no evidence has emerged that the killer was a UnitedHealthcare customer.
While the words “deny” and “delay” have multiple meanings, they could be a reference to the tactics used by insurers of all kinds to avoid paying claims. The words are so linked to those practices that they were used in the title of a 2010 book probing them, “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.”
“An insurance company’s greatest expense is what it pays out in claims,” wrote the book’s author, Jay Feinman, an emeritus professor at Rutgers. “If it pays out less in claims, it keeps more in profits.”
No one knows how often private insurers like UnitedHealthcare deny claims because they are generally not required to publish that data. People who bought coverage under Obamacare, a government-funded plan, had 17 percent of their care denied in 2021, according to KFF, a health policy group. Other surveys have found that denials are more prevalent among those with private insurance than those who carried government coverage.
UnitedHealthcare, part of the giant conglomerate UnitedHealth Group, reported more than $16 billion in operating profits last year and employed roughly 140,000 people. The company is a frequent lightning rod for criticism over how it handles claims.
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