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.
I mean I would prefer everyone get good quality healthcare for free, so don’t listen to me cus I am the radical here right…? (only radicals respond to threats of senseless cyclical violence with appeals to collective visions of the future that benefit all by truthfully recognizing the present incongruity?)
Maybe we could both sides things here a bit? Exchange some bullets for some affordable end of life care and I have a queer premonition the angry mobs might start to go home to their families that now have a chance at a humane future.
The literal fatal flaw of this strategy however is that the people in power have to panic and pick the “appease the angry mob” option before the angry mob has no families left to go home to for it to have the possibility of working.
If you wait too long inveitably and irrevocably you face a counter force, not a force, which is a much worse eventuality for everyone most especially our children in the end.