by
Thomas Dworetzky, Contributing Reporter | May 03, 2017
The Trump Administration has filed a complaint and intervened in a suit against UnitedHealth Group accusing the health insurance giant of Medicare Advantage overcharges involving its UHC of California plan.
The suit was filed originally in 2009 by former Senior Care Action Health Plan employee James Swoden in California, and is titled
United States ex rel. Swoben v. Secure Horizons, et al.
This comes on the heels of the U.S. Department of Justice intervention in a related case,
United State ex rel. Poehling v. UnitedHealth Group Inc. The government is slated to file a complaint in that case by May 16.
That case, too, claimed the health insurer overcharged Medicare.
Both cases were filed under the False Claims Act, which lets private parties sue on behalf of the United States for false claims on government funds, and to share in any monies recovered.
At issue are inflated payments from the government because of inaccurate health status data for patients enrolled in the plan,
according to the StarTribune.
“Defendants knowingly presented or caused to be presented a false or fraudulent Risk Adjustment Attestation to the Government in order to receive and retain risk adjustment payments from the Medicare Program” charged
the suit filed May 1 in Los Angeles by the DOJ.
The lawsuit alleges that “since 2005, UnitedHealth knew that many diagnosis codes that it submitted to the Medicare Program for risk adjustment were not supported and validated by the medical records of its enrolled beneficiaries,” the government said in its complaint.
The action is a shot across the bow to insurers, according to the DOJ. "This action sends a warning that our office will continue to scrutinize and hold accountable Medicare Advantage insurers to safeguard the integrity of the Medicare program," Acting U.S. Attorney Sandra Brown in Los Angeles said,
according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
But UnitedHealth has fought back against this depiction of their actions, claiming that it followed the rules appropriately. "We reject these claims and will contest them vigorously," company spokesman Matthew Burns protested, according to the paper, stressing that his company was clear about the process it followed filing claims and “how we interpreted the government's murky policies."
