UnitedHealth Group (UNH) shares fell as much as 3.1% premarket on Monday after the Wall Street Journal reported that a Senate committee investigating the company’s practices found that the managed care insurer deployed “aggressive tactics” to collect payment-boosting diagnoses for its Medicare Advantage members.
The new report found that UnitedHealth had “turned risk adjustment into a business, which was not the original intent,” the Journal reported. The report is based on a review of 50,000 pages of records UnitedHealth turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and the committee’s chair, sought the documents in a February letter referencing a 2024 Wall Street Journal investigation. The Journal investigation found UnitedHealth systematically added diagnoses to patients’ records that triggered billions of dollars in extra federal payments. Some of those diagnoses were described as questionable or inaccurate, and many patients did not appear to receive treatment for the added conditions.
UnitedHealth (UNH) faces several probes into its practices, including civil and criminal probes by the Justice Department that the company disclosed in July.
A UnitedHealth spokesman told WSJ that the company disagreed with the Senate report’s characterizations, adding that UNH complies with Medicare requirements and performed well in audits of diagnoses. “We remain focused on continuing to deliver lower costs, better access, and higher quality care for the people we serve, including those in Medicare Advantage,” he said.
Shares of other health insurers also fell before the market open. Centene (CNC) -2.4%, Molina Healthcare (MOH) -1.3%, CVS Health (CVS) -1.1%, Oscar Health (OSCR) -4.1%, Humana (HUM) -1%, and Elevance Health (ELV) -0.76%.