The Department of Justice has launched an antitrust investigation into UnitedHealth Group. The Wall Street Journal reported This was reported on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
In recent weeks, investigators have been interviewing representatives from the health care industry that competes with UnitedHealth, including physician groups, the report said.
During the investigation, investigators asked about issues including certain relationships between the company’s UnitedHealthcare insurance division and its Optum medical services division, which owns physician groups and other assets.
Optum Health, a division of UnitedHealth, provides a wide range of health care solutions, from pharmacy benefit management to financial counseling and mental health support.
Americans are facing rising health care costs, with estimated medical costs per person in 2022 at about $13,493, according to federal data released late last year.
The Biden administration has made lowering drug prices a top priority. Last year, it passed the first anti-inflation drug pricing law in U.S. history and has since turned its attention to pharmacy benefit manager intermediaries.
Lawmakers and the Federal Trade Commission have been investigating the role of these intermediaries in driving up health care costs. Since last year, several bills have been introduced that would require disclosure of business transactions, including fees earned on those transactions.
The Journal also reported that the Justice Department is investigating the company’s Medicare billing practices to determine whether doctors are aggressively characterizing patients’ illnesses to unfairly increase government payments. Ta.
Investigators are asking about the impact of the company’s acquisition by a physician group on competitors and consumers, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The company also competes with CVS Health and Cigna, which offer health insurance plans as well as pharmacy benefit management (PBM) businesses.
The Department of Justice had previously filed a lawsuit seeking to block UnitedHealth Group’s February 2022 acquisition of Change Healthcare, which it completed later that year.
An outage due to a cybersecurity attack at billing and data systems provider Change Healthcare has disrupted the entire U.S. healthcare business since last week.
The Justice Department declined to comment, and UnitedHealth did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The company’s shares closed down 2.3%.
On Monday, Examiner Media reported, citing internal emails, that UnitedHealth received notice from the Department of Justice in October last year that it had begun a “private antitrust investigation into the company.”
