News & Blogs

Biden’s War on Medicare

President Joe Biden’s full-frontal assault on Medicare is becoming visible to America’s seniors. It will result in fewer patient choices, reduced benefits, and ultimately worse health outcomes. Biden’s efforts, assisted by Congressional Democrats, are destroying Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage. Medicare Advantage was originally created as Medicare Part C in 1997 when I was Speaker of the House. It was introduced to create more comprehensive health plan options for seniors that…

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UnitedHealth’s Harms Reach Far Beyond Recent Cyberattack

This month, two committees in Congress hosted Andrew Witty, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, to discuss the recent cyberattack on Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of the health conglomerate. That attack crippled claims processing across the country for weeks. The head of the American Hospital Association declared it “the most significant and consequential incident of its kind against the U.S. healthcare system.”

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Time For Congress to Take a Good Look at UnitedHealth and the AARP

Earlier this month, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group was called to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate regarding his company’s handling of a major cyberattack on its wholly owned health IT subsidiary company, Change Healthcare. Considering that the massive company interacts with nearly a third of all medical records and has just acknowledged that a “substantial proportion of people in America” could be impacted in some form or another due to the breach,…

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Breitbart: ‘Too Big to Fail’: Congress Grills UnitedHealth CEO Over Company’s Vertically Integrated Consolidation and Massive Cyberattack

As Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) recently said, “UnitedHealth Group is the Standard Oil of Healthcare.”  It has bought virtually every aspect of the healthcare system. In January 2021, it bought one of the biggest health payment systems, Change Healthcare, for $13 billion. In February, it was hit by a cyberattack that exposed millions of personal patient records and delayed reimbursements for doctors, hospitals, and independent pharmacies. So, on Wednesday, the House and Senate held hearings…

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Daily Caller: Biden Admin Launches Probe Into Health Care Giant Amid Antitrust Crackdown: REPORT

The Biden administration in recent weeks has launched an antitrust investigation into the health care giant UnitedHealth Group following a string of other antitrust suits by the federal government, according to The Wall Street Journal. The investigation from the Department of Justice (DOJ) is looking into whether the relationship between UnitedHealth’s insurance unit and the company’s health services arm, Optum, is stifling competition in the broader industry, according to people who spoke to the WSJ. The news…

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NYT: Insurers Reap Hidden Fees by Slashing Payments. You May Get the Bill.

Weeks after undergoing heart surgery, Gail Lawson found herself back in an operating room. Her incision wasn’t healing, and an infection was spreading. At a hospital in Ridgewood, N.J., Dr. Sidney Rabinowitz performed a complex, hourslong procedure to repair tissue and close the wound. While recuperating, Ms. Lawson phoned the doctor’s office in a panic. He returned the call himself and squeezed her in for an appointment the next day.

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The American Prospect: Building a Giant: Mapping UnitedHealth’s consumption of our health care system—from the ’70s to today

“Things changed after Optum took over.” That was the statement of a case manager with naviHealth, a technology company that used predictive algorithms to manage post-acute care for Medicare Advantage patients. The company sought to limit unnecessary hospital stays and minimize waste, a problem that has plagued the U.S. health care system for decades. After being sold to Optum, a subsidiary of the health care colossus UnitedHealth Group, naviHealth denied coverage for at least two elderly patients against their…

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Citrus County Chronicle: AARP is conflicted about everything — except its bottom line

To some, it might seem odd that an organization that claims to advocate for seniors has as its largest partner a business reportedly under investigation by the Justice Department for its Medicare billing practices. But unfortunately, such conflicts are par for the course for AARP. As I outline in a new report for American Commitment, the organization formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons has become incredibly compromised over the past two decades…

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