For $50 million, UnitedHealth Group Inc. agreed to settle a probe brought by New York”™s attorney general, who has investigated how much insurance carriers charge for care outside of their existing network of doctors.
Minnesota-based UnitedHealth offers insurance in Connecticut through its Oxford Health division in Trumbull.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo investigated a separate UnitedHealth subsidiary called Ingenix, which according to Cuomo, is the largest provider of health-care billing information in the nation.
Cuomo focused on whether Ingenix intentionally skewed “usual and customary” rates for medical care downward through faulty data collection, poor pooling procedures and a lack of audits. The prosecutor said that using the database, insurers underpaid policyholders between 10 percent and 28 percent less than what they might have otherwise received for medical services.
In February 2008, Cuomo subpoenaed several other carriers using the Ingenix database, including Hartford-based Aetna Inc., Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. and Philadelphia-based CIGNA Corp. All three carriers sell insurance in New York and Connecticut.
The UnitedHealth payment will be used to set up a new, independent database administered by an unspecified nonprofit organization to track out-of-network reimbursement rates.
