A Guardian investigation finds insurer quietly paid facilities that helped it gain Medicare enrollees and reduce hospitalizations. Whistleblowers allege harm to residents
UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest healthcare conglomerate, has secretly paid nursing homes thousands in bonuses to help slash hospital transfers for ailing residents – part of a series of cost-cutting tactics that has saved the company millions, but at times risked residents’ health, a Guardian investigation has found.
Those secret bonuses have been paid out as part of a UnitedHealth program that stations the company’s own medical teams in nursing homes and pushes them to cut care expenses for residents covered by the insurance giant.
In several cases identified by the Guardian, nursing home residents who needed immediate hospital care under the program failed to receive it, after interventions from UnitedHealth staffers. At least one lived with permanent brain damage following his delayed transfer, according to a confidential nursing home incident log, recordings and photo evidence.
Even if you’re the most naïve person in the world and willing to give unending benefit of the doubt, I’m not really sure how you can conclude that the late CEO wasn’t at the very least grossly negligent on an industrial scale.
This isn’t negligent. There is no way that “i pay you for not transferring a person to a hospital that needs a hospital” isn’t intent.
Do you read my comment and interpret it as me saying that I think that this was negligence?
I agree with what you are saying, just drawing the line earlier.
In my eyes even the most naive person would understand this to be intentional. Or well, if we take children as the example of the most naive in the world there is many things where adults think they need to give a level of benefit of the doubt that a child would not give.