So apparently UnitedHealthcare — you know, that massive health insurance company that’s probably screwed you over at least once — has been literally paying nursing homes to NOT send sick elderly people to the hospital.
I did some research. Apparently the headline is sensationalizing it quite a bit.
What was really happening was UHC was rewarding nursing homes with incentives when the home reduced the number of hospital referrals for things that didn’t require a hospital visit, and instead took care of them properly. (Thus not shifting the responsibility). That is, not sending grandma to the ER every time she had a cough. This was better for the overwhelmed hospitals, people with real emergencies, and for the nursing home residents who would get appropriate care in-house.
Some nursing homes took this to the extreme and wouldn’t send their wards to the hospital for anything at all - resulting in unnecessary deaths, but that’s the nursing home’s fault, not entirely UHC’s.
I mean fuck UHC and health insurance companies in general, but this story is not as cut & dry as implied by the headline.
If what you’re saying is 100% accurate, UHC still created, enabled, and incentivized an environment that led to some nursing homes to commit these horrible crimes. At best UHC should be considered an accessory to these murders.
I’d be very surprised if this possibility genuinely did not occur to them during their decision making. But the model they created conveniently puts the purported blame in the hands of other entities, so there was really no incentive for them to come to any other solution.
What utter cocksuckers. Every last person involved in this scheme deserves to be thrown into jail.
I did some research. Apparently the headline is sensationalizing it quite a bit.
What was really happening was UHC was rewarding nursing homes with incentives when the home reduced the number of hospital referrals for things that didn’t require a hospital visit, and instead took care of them properly. (Thus not shifting the responsibility). That is, not sending grandma to the ER every time she had a cough. This was better for the overwhelmed hospitals, people with real emergencies, and for the nursing home residents who would get appropriate care in-house. Some nursing homes took this to the extreme and wouldn’t send their wards to the hospital for anything at all - resulting in unnecessary deaths, but that’s the nursing home’s fault, not entirely UHC’s.
I mean fuck UHC and health insurance companies in general, but this story is not as cut & dry as implied by the headline.
If what you’re saying is 100% accurate, UHC still created, enabled, and incentivized an environment that led to some nursing homes to commit these horrible crimes. At best UHC should be considered an accessory to these murders.
I’d be very surprised if this possibility genuinely did not occur to them during their decision making. But the model they created conveniently puts the purported blame in the hands of other entities, so there was really no incentive for them to come to any other solution.
I think this is more an example of perverse incentives…
Hospitals are overwhelmed, they might reach out to the insurance companies to try and help reduce the incoming patients…
UHC is evil, but I could see how this program perhaps started with good intentions, but became perverse.