CQ Healthbeat (3/27) reports, “UnitedHealth Group officials are in for an unpleasant experience at a Senate hearing next week – if a set-up session on Thursday was any indication.” At a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing today, witnesses “described how health insurers routinely defrauded millions of patients who sought out-of-network care by paying less than the insurers owed for medical bills.” A witness told the panel, which will hear from United representatives next Tuesday, that “the practice could have potentially affected as many as one in three insured Americans and lasted for at least a decade.” Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller, IV (D-WV), “declined to say what types of changes should be included in health overhaul legislation,” saying, “I want to make sure exactly what it is we need to do…just in the saying of it, I could do damage to health reform.”
From the American Association for Justice news release.
