UnitedHealthcare: 1) Health Tracker and 2) Winning the War
UnitedHealthcare Expands Availability of Quicken Health Expense Tracker to Nearly 700,000 Consumers
Intuit
Press Release
August 3, 2009
UnitedHealthcare, a UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) company, is expanding the availability of Quicken Health Expense TrackerSM to help nearly 700,000 of its commercial health plan enrollees nationwide better manage their health-related finances and information.
UnitedHealthcare… expects to make it available to more than 20 million commercial health plan participants by year end.
Drawing on claims data, Quicken Health Expense Tracker automatically assembles a complete financial picture of an individual’s medical-related savings and expenses into one easy-to-use location.
Peter Karpas, senior vice president and general manager, Quicken Health Group: “Our goal is to transform the way people interact with the health care system and make the financial side of health care easier for consumers, health plans, employers and providers. And it starts with the support of forward-thinking companies like UnitedHealthcare.”
Quicken Health Expense Tracker was developed by Intuit and Ingenix, a UnitedHealth Group company that is a leader in health information solutions. Ingenix played a key role in designing the security and connectivity between the software and enrollees’ health information.
And…
The Health Insurers Have Already Won
How UnitedHealth and rival carriers, maneuvering behind the scenes in Washington, shaped health-care reform for their own benefit
By Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein
BusinessWeek
August 6, 2009
As the health reform fight shifts this month from a vacationing Washington to congressional districts and local airwaves around the country, much more of the battle than most people realize is already over. The likely victors are insurance giants such as UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Aetna (AET), and WellPoint (WLP). The carriers have succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable.
UnitedHealth followed up on June 30 with another report for lawmakers pinpointing $332 billion in savings through better use of technology and administrative simplification. If enacted, those changes would potentially benefit UnitedHealth’s Ingenix data-crunching unit. Ingenix, with annual revenue of $1.6 billion, is poised to establish a national digital clearinghouse to ensure the accuracy of medical payments and provide a centralized service for checking the credentials of physicians.
During a media presentation in May in Washington, (UnitedHealth’s Simon) Stevens said medical costs incurred by UnitedHealth’s corporate clients were rising only 4% annually, less than the industry average of 6% to 8%. But that claim seemed to conflict with statements company executives made just a month earlier during a conference call with investors. On that quarterly earnings call, UnitedHealth CEO Hemsley conceded that medical costs on commercial plans would increase 8% this year.
http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/09_33/b4143034820260.htm
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
What a nice thing UnitedHealthcare is doing. Being dedicated to the health care consumer, they are helping their commercial plan enrollees manage their health-related finances and information through the Quicken Health Expense Tracker developed by Intuit jointly with their own Ingenix division. This is the industry’s solution for reducing the administrative complexity and waste of our fragmented, multi-payer system. Or is it?
Anything that UnitedHealthcare does is designed to benefit its investors. That’s what capitalism is all about. The for-profit insurers’ primary product is administrative services - the more the better. The Quicken Health Expense Tracker does absolutely nothing to reduce the administrative excesses in health care financing; in fact, it merely adds one more administrative product that the consumer ultimately pays for. It increases the cost of health care without providing any direct health benefit. That is not the reform we need.
But the next question should scare all of us. What does UnitedHealthcare intend to do with this very rich trove of information on the health and health-related finances of tens of millions of health care consumers? UnitedHealthcare’s Ingenix already has a track record of using a data bank of much more limited information to cheat health care consumers out of billions of dollars. Although they surely will not duplicate that same stunt, can you imagine UnitedHealthcare executives sitting back and simply staring at this treasure trove without diving in to find the gold to distribute amongst the shareholders, including themselves? Under the principles of capitalism it is their amoral obligation to start digging.
Perhaps we need a study by The Lewin Group to inform us on the costs and the benefits, or lack thereof, of this program. Er… uh… now that they are owned by Ingenix, maybe that’s not such a hot idea.
Read the cover story in the current BusinessWeek (link above). It’s long, and it’s depressing. UnitedHealth and rival carriers “have already won.”
Wait! How could they have won? It’s not over. At stake are both the health and the financial security of the people of our nation. This is war! Man your battle stations! This is the most honorable war we will ever fight because we are saving lives instead of destroying them.