UnitedHealthcare loses legal battle against KKR-owned doctors group
A defeat for UnitedHealthcare in a legal battle over the cost of medical treatment marks a setback for the US health insurer in its battle with private equity firms that have poured billions of dollars into contentious bets on healthcare.
Envision Healthcare, a KKR-owned company that employs doctors who staff emergency rooms and anaesthesiology departments in hundreds of US hospitals, sued UnitedHealthcare in 2018 in a dispute over billing practices. The litigation then disappeared from public view after the proceedings moved from federal court to a secretive arbitration panel.
In the last three months of last year, Envision registered more than 3,000 disputes with health insurers via the government body charged with resolving disagreements over the cost of hospital care, according to an official tally published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a US government agency, last week.
According to Loren Adler, an economist who studies healthcare policy at the Brookings Institution, such disputes are likely to have far-reaching consequences, not only for the warring parties, but for the cost and availability of healthcare.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Mark Vandevelde
