Washington, D.C. — Ahead of a Senate Finance Committee hearing on April 30 with the UnitedHealth Group CEO over the disastrous February Change hack, and following news that the Department of Justice is investigating the company for monopolization, the American Economic Liberties Project today released an essential new resource documenting UnitedHealth Group’s abuses of patients, independent medical practices and pharmacies.

“The Change hack is just the tip of the iceberg for the costs of UHG’s monopoly power,” said Ashley Nowicki, Policy Analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project. “After merging and acquiring its way to become the largest healthcare conglomerate in the country, UnitedHealth Group is now a too big to care monopoly with the power to deny patients care, squeeze independent physicians and pharmacists, and manipulate data to maximize its profits—all because they face no meaningful competition. The cost of consolidation is at its highest in healthcare, which underscores the urgency of federal enforcers and policymakers to hold this giant accountable for its abuses and intervene in this market before UnitedHealth can impose its profit over patients mantra across the entire system.“

Economic Liberties’ new tracker comes ahead of a series of Congressional hearings on the Change hack and amid news that executive at UnitedHealth Group “netted a combined $101.5 million from stock sales made over four months leading up to when the public became aware of a federal antitrust investigation.” According to our analysis, UnitedHealth Group has been accused of engaging in the following activities in the past seven years:

• Two reports and one lawsuit for violating patient privacy;
• Seven reports and three lawsuits for upcoding and overbilling the federal government;
• Seven reports and five lawsuits for denying patient care based on cost instead of medical necessity, and
• Eight reports and seven lawsuits for steering patients and providers toward UHG owned subsidiaries in order to increase company profits.

Over the years, UnitedHealth has leveraged its vast empire to self-deal at the expense of medical professionals and to box out other healthcare industry players using unfair tactics. The DOJ is reportedly examining UnitedHealth’s preferencing of Optum-owned groups in contracting practices, and whether its ownership of healthcare providers has presented unfair barriers to competing insurers, among other concerns.

Listed 5th on the Fortune 500, UnitedHealth Group spans many areas of healthcare. One of the country’s largest health insurers, covering approximately 53 million Americans, UnitedHealth today is also the country’s largest direct employer of physicians, with around 90,000 doctors in its direct employ following a decade of acquisitions of medical practices—including the pending acquisition of home health company Amedisys. Through its healthcare service subsidiary Optum, UnitedHealth owns Optum Rx, one of the main pharmacy benefit managers and mail-order pharmacies. Through these business lines, UnitedHealth also is one of the largest providers of Medicare Advantage plans, administers Medicare Part D drug benefits, and manages Medicaid benefits for state governments.

View “United Health Group Abuse Tracker” to learn more.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.