United Healthcare accused of denying claim of woman in coma in deleted post
The patient's doctor criticized the insurance company but later appeared to remove his account.
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Wow, this is a whole lot of double speak.
UnitedHealthcare, which has not commented publicly on Levy's post, said in a press release on its website December 13: "UnitedHealthcare approves and pays about 90 percent of medical claims upon submission. Importantly, of those that require further review, around one-half of one percent are due to medical or clinical reasons. Highly inaccurate and grossly misleading information has been circulated about our company's treatment of insurance claims."
This is from 2023:
In their complaint, however, the families accuse UnitedHealth of using faulty AI to deny claims as part of a financial scheme to collect premiums without having to pay for coverage for elderly beneficiaries it believes lack the knowledge and resources "to appeal the erroneous AI-powered decisions."
UnitedHealth continues "to systemically deny claims using their flawed AI model because they know that only a tiny minority of policyholders (roughly 0.2%)1 will appeal denied claims, and the vast majority will either pay out-of-pocket costs or forgo the remainder of their prescribed post-acute care."
The "90% of medical claims" is such a weaselly metric. Yeah, if you have a small-cost claim like your annual physical or basic x-rays they pay, but if you need anything that costs money, that would push you over your deductible, they deny. Saying 90% just isn't meaningful if most claims are small-dollar.
Claim is also a later step in the process. The first step is prior authorization. So they could deny the prior auth that leads to work not being done which leads to no claim to count as a denial. Or a patient doesn't submit the claim because it had a denied prior auth, so again no denied claim. 90% on claims is a terrible percentage.
This is people’s lives they’re fucking with
I wouldn't be surprised if they also carefully selected the "medical" part. Drug prescription? Medical. Post-intervention recovery? Not "medical".
