United Healthcare, also spelled UnitedHealthcare, can trace its roots back to 1974 when Richard Taylor Burke founded Charter Med Incorporated, a Minnetonka, Minnesota-based privately held company. In 1977, the United HealthCare Corporation was created to reorganize the company and became the parent company of Charter Med. United HealthCare’s charter was to manage the newly created Physicians Health Plan of Minnesota, an early health management organization.
Today the company offers health care products and insurance services. UnitedHealth Group is the world’s eighth-largest company in terms of revenue and second-largest healthcare company behind CVS Health by revenue, and the largest insurance company by net premiums. UnitedHealthcare revenues comprise 80% of the Group’s overall revenue.
The company continues to expand, often by acquisition.
In 2017, UnitedHealthcare acquired Rally Health and in 2019, it acquired DaVita Medical Group.
In 2016, UnitedHealthcare announced that it was pulling out of the Obamacare health plan in all but three states.
The company has faced numerous fines and lawsuits including in 2017, CMS fined UnitedHealthcare after discovering issues in Medicare Part D leading to delays or denials in a 2016 audit, the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance fined UnitedHealthcare $2.5 million due to various compliance issues; this was the largest fine against a licensee in nine years and in Pennslyvania, UnitedHealthcare assessed $1 million penalty for claims payment violations.
UnitedHealthcare maintains a corporate office in Minnetonka, Minnesota.
Narayana Srinivasan
December 30, 2022
Sir Andrew Witty
Chief Executive Officer
United Healthcare
5901 Lincoln Drive
Minneapolis, MN 55436
Dear Sir Andrew,
Ref: AARP Supplemental Plan: 399182845-11
AARP Part D Optum R/X Plan: 0090057951, 0172335471
Case Number: AT-3163463-V
I am fairly certain that this letter will never reach you.
This letter will be intercepted by one of your administrative assistants and in turn send me a pro forma, form-letter reply without a date and signature as is the custom with the United Healthcare. United Healthcare is famous for illegality—proof is attached.
I recently received an imbecilic, idiotic, vacuous unsigned letter, marinated with a tissue of lies dated December 15, 2022 from your company. I have actually attached the original for your benefit so that you know firsthand how incompetent your employees are. Even if a letter is unsigned, a professional letter should include the full name of the sender. In addition, the letter should be proofread. The letter contains an abundance of spelling mistakes and lies. As your company is known to be totally unprofessional, and of criminal bent, it has probably become imperative not to include the full name of the individual sending the letter.
Here are the reasons why I contacted your company, United Healthcare and OptumR/X:
1. Both your websites for United healthcare and OptumR/X do not work the way they ought to work. It is indeed a shame a multibillion-dollar company such as yours lacks a competent information technology department. Therefore, I respectfully request all statements be mailed to me in printed format.
2. The letter I received, dated December 15, 2022, Case Number: AT-3163463-V, contains several lies. I am going to explicate them now. The annoying and painful letter states on page 2 that I paid $1,039.30 on December 5, 2022. Not so. I indeed paid by check the sum of $2,078.40 payable to OptumR/X, which represents both my wife’s and my contribution towards Part D of the Medicare prescription plan.
This is how I arrived at the sum of $2078.40: OptumR/X told me over the phone and in undated letters that my (Narayana Srinivasan) premium for the year 2023 is $1470.00, and my wife’s (Rama Srinivasan) premium is $640.00, the total sum being $2078.40. Obviously, your accounting department is also dysfunctional. I am appalled to note how many elderly people your company is taking advantage of.
3. OptumR/X claims that I owe them $96.20. This claim comes to me towards the end of the year! According to this claim, this incident happened sometime in the middle of the year. I really doubt that I owe anything at all. The simple reason being, no company ships anything without being paid. The letter dated December 15, 2022 states that the credit card payment did not go through, and hence I owe OptumR/X the amount of $96.20. If the credit card payment did not go through, pray tell, why ship me the medicines? No company will. Everyone knows for certain that your company is not a philanthropy, nor is it a publicly benevolent company. Reading the kind of comments posted on the Internet about your company, impartial observers will be tempted to conclude you are all a bunch of the proverbial “Shylocks”. To end the prolonged back and forth, I am enclosing a check for $96.20, dated December 30, 2022, check number 161, even though I owe nothing. You may forward the check to wherever it is supposed to go. Henceforth, please make sure that OptumR/X does not ship any medicines to me until and unless the cash is on hand.
4. The vacuous, unsigned letter dated December 15,2022 states that if I have any questions, that I should call the telephone number printed in the back of my insurance card. Yes, I do and I did. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, every time the telephone lines are contaminated with spurious noises either on purpose or for some unknown reason. Even more, if I manage to get through to someone, the call recipient is located in the Philippines who can barely speak or understand English. This leaves the problems unresolved. I fondly and piously hope that you will correct this problem with alacrity, unless of course your company is intent upon swindling elderly and uneducated people who do not have the time to complain or write a letter to you–unable to because of their age- the lawsuits against your company speaks to this eloquently.
5. Once again, the vacuous, unsigned letter dated December 15,2022 states that I hung up the telephone while speaking to your company’s people. This is another lie. Why would I do that while eagerly waiting for an answer?
6. Your Medicare billing cycle, for some unknown reason, has suddenly changed. It is now from May to June of the following year, while the Medicare “Open Season” runs from October to December 15th of every year. You take advantage of this change in billing cycle that differs from the Medicare “Open Season” by raising the premium in May of the following year. This negates the ability of the elderly people to do an educated comparison of the premiums between different companies during the “Medicare Open Season”. (from published public sources: Influencing the research of Yale University economist Zack Cooper : In August 2021, a report from The Intercept revealed that UnitedHealthcare worked behind the scenes to guide Yale University healthcare economist Zack Cooper’s research on surprise medical billing.)
This is nothing but a blatant deception that affords your company to pick the pockets of elderly people. In light of the available technology such as the AI and ML, you should be able to determine the premium during the Medicare Open Season.
I eagerly wait for your response to this letter.
Best Regards, as always,
Narayana Srinivasan
cc. FTC
CFPB
Plus, the Attachment.
Attachment
For Your Information:
You Are Not Running An Honest Enterprise!!!!!!
Legal issues
Influencing the research of Yale University economist Zack Cooper
In August 2021, a report from The Intercept revealed that UnitedHealthcare worked behind the scenes to guide Yale University healthcare economist Zack Cooper’s research on surprise medical billing.
Richard Cole, and others v. United Healthcare
On April 29, 2019, Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, a cancer survivor, recused himself from a case against United Healthcare, stating that the company’s denial of treatment was “immoral and barbaric”, and that his opinions regarding the company would prevent him from “deciding this case fairly and impartially.”[104][105]
In 2006, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began investigating the conduct of UnitedHealth Group’s management and directors, for backdating of stock options. Investigations were also begun by the Internal Revenue Service and prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, who subpoenaed documents from the company. The investigations came to light after a series of probing stories in the Wall Street Journal in May 2006, discussing apparent backdating of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of stock options by UHC management. The backdating apparently occurred with the knowledge and approval of the directors, according to the Journal. Major shareholders have filed lawsuits accusing former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean and UHC’s other directors of failing in their fiduciary duty.[82] On October 15, 2006, CEO William W. McGuire was forced to resign, and relinquish hundreds of millions of dollars in stock options. On December 6, 2007, the SEC announced a settlement under which McGuire will repay $468 million, as a partial settlement of the backdating prosecution.[83][84][85]
In June 2006, the American Chiropractic Association filed a national class-action lawsuit against the American Chiropractic Network (ACN), which is owned by UnitedHealth Group and administers chiropractic benefits, and against UnitedHealth Group itself, for alleged practices in violation of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).[86]
OptumInsight, aka Ingenix
In February 2008, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced an industry-wide investigation into a scheme by health insurers to defraud consumers by manipulating reasonable and customary rates. The announcement included a statement that Cuomo intended “to file suit against Ingenix, Inc., its parent UnitedHealth Group, and three additional subsidiaries.” Cuomo asserted that his investigation found that rates found in a database of health care charges maintained by Ingenix were lower than what he determined was the actual cost of certain medical expenses. Cuomo said this inappropriately allowed health insurance companies to deny a portion of provider claims, thereby pushing costs down to members.[87]
On January 13, 2009, Ingenix announced an agreement with the New York State attorney settling the probe into the independence of the health pricing database. Under the settlement, UnitedHealth Group and Ingenix would pay $50 million to finance a new, non-profit entity that would develop a new health care pricing database. Ingenix would discontinue its medical pricing databases when the new entity makes its product available. The company acknowledged the appearance of a conflict of interest but admitted no wrongdoing.[88]
On January 15, 2009, UnitedHealth Group announced a $350 million settlement of three class action lawsuits filed in Federal court by the American Medical Association, UnitedHealth Group members, healthcare providers, and state medical societies for not paying out-of-network benefits. This settlement came two days after a similar settlement with Cuomo.[89]
You are denying a sick person a piece of equipment that help’s him expel CO2 from his lungs. You constantly deny saying that he does not meet the medical criteria for it. However, you don’t have a problem in paying out to the hospital the requested payment from them for using the same piece of medical equipment that was used on my sick husband, This machine and other medications was orderd by the group of attending Doctors which included several Lung Doctor’s who specialize in my husbands conditions of Chronic respiratory failure with hypoxia and hypercapnia(HCC) Pulmonary emphysema, unspecified emphysema which is a type (HCC) Bronchiectasis, Bronchialitis and OSA.
Your message to me is Perfectly clear in that, a sick person meets the Insurance medical criteria whilst being admitted to the hospital but they do not meet the Insurance medical criteria when they are released from the hospital and apply for the same sustaining medical equipment to be used in their home!! Please explain as I am more than confused over this constant denial and watch my husband get sicker and sicker daily!! I await your urgent reply.