Keith Olbermann Exposes How United Health Group & Its CEO Are Ripping Off The American Public

OLBERMANN: The United Health Group, one of the largest health insurance companies in the country, says it is extremely neutral in the current debate over reform. But last week, it provided Politico.com with the talking points it gives its own employees for attending protests and town halls. Included therein, quote, "a government-run health plan would be a roadblock to meaningful health care reform."

The United Health Group customer told Talking Points Memo and repeated to COUNTDOWN that the insurer directed him to right wing sites and events. United Health Group denies this. But in our third story tonight, what kind of company thinks opposing the president`s health care plan is extremely neutral? According to OpenSecrets.org, President and CEO Stephen Hemsley has personally given 15,000 dollars to Democrats, 41,000 to Republicans and 36,000 more to United`s political action committee, a committee which has given hundreds of thousands to Republicans, but as of the 2008 election cycle, had given 61 percent to Democrats, who now, of course, control the health care debate.

All of that, of course, is legal.

However, after fighting lawsuits filed by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the American Medical Association, lawsuits which accused United Health Group of a scheme to defraud patients, which United Health Group denied, United Health Group decided to settle those suits one week before President Obama took office.

Here`s how the scheme worked: for most Americans, when you go out of network, your insurance pays a preset percentage, not of your actual bill, but of what they think your bill should be. The, quote, "usual and customary bill." So if your insurance company covered 80 percent of out- of-network costs, and the usual and customary rate estimate for a chest X- Ray was 100 bucks, your insurance company paid you 80 bucks, even if your actual X-ray costs 150.
Why?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHEN HEMSLEY: : Physician reimbursement based on nothing but the doctor`s bill is simply not economically tenable for consumers, nor sustainable for our health care system.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: So what would be economically tenable? For decades, insurance companies bought their estimates of usual and customary from two competing databases. Seven months after Mr. Hemsley joined United Health Group, the company purchased one of those databases. Ten months later, it bought the other one.

Just a year and a half later, the AMA sued, claiming United Health Group was now low-balling the usual and customary rates used by the insurance industry, so insurance companies, including United Health Group, could cheat patients and providers on their reimbursements, telling patients the company providing their rate estimates was, quote, "independent."

While United Health Group was telling other insurance companies they would get a 16 to one return on investment if they bought those rate estimates from United Health Group. Cuomo said United Health Group low balled consumers by as much as 30 percent.

United Health Group`s own general counsel said "conflicts of interest were inherent." Mr. Hemsley did not.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HEMSLEY: We understand that appearance and that appearance of an inherent conflict.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: United Health Group agreed to pay 50 million to set up a new actually independent database and to reimburse patients and providers 350 million dollars, although a judge is still deciding whether or not that is enough.

A Senate committee concluded that millions of Americans, including more than one million military families, paid billions more for out-of- network health care than they should have.

Republicans like to quote the Lewin Group`s claim that more than 100 million Americans would ditch employer health plans for a public option. House Whip Eric Cantor, Orrin Hatch of Senate Finance, they have called Lewin non-partisan.

But the Lewin Group, too, is owned by United Health Group, which has given thousands to Hatch and Cantor in just the past two years.
Before United Health Group, Hemsley spent 23 years at Arthur Anderson Accounting, serving as chief financial officer from fall of 1995 until when he left in `97. For services overlapping that period, Arthur Anderson Accounting became embroiled in several scandals, sued for fraud over its accounting for Waste Management Incorporated, denied wrongdoing. Settled for 95 million.

Sued over Sunbeam Accounting. Denied wrongdoing. Settled for 180 million. Fined more than seven million.

Sued over the Baptist Foundation of Arizona. These investors, many of who are elderly, trusted the misleading financial statements audited by Anderson. That from then Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano. Denied wrong doing. Settled for 217 million.

And Enron, where Arthur Anderson Accounting was both auditor and consultant. By the time both companies came down, Mr. Hemsley was gone.

In 1999, Mr. Hemsley negotiated a new deal as United Health Group president. United Health Group`s compensation committee gave him stock options, back dated stock options, meaning they were back dated to when the stock was low. So they were worth more, more money the second he got them. This saved him the trouble of having to wait until the stock price actually rose.

Two years later, after Hemsley hired the chairman of United Health Group compensation committee as a personal money manager, United Health Group investors were still being told the compensation committee was, quote, independent.

Both United Health Group`s auditor and consultant to the compensation committee, Arthur Anderson Accounting.

When the "Wall Street Journal" revealed the back dating, investors sued. United Health Group got rid of its CEO at the time. It replaced him with the man who received the second most valuable package of back dated options, Hemsley, who said he knew nothing about the backdating. Investors sued again, claiming Hemsley had signed off on those options.

Why would United Health Group keep Hemsley if that were true? Quote, "the impact of the stock was significantly mitigated with the retention of Hemsley. If both had been forced to leave the company, then investors would have looked at it as a wholesale management change."

Hemsley denied wrong-doing, but agreed to return some of his options, 190 million dollars worth.

According to "Business Week," United Health Group has, quote, "achieved a secondary aim of constraining the new benefit that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured."

After Republican Chuck Grassley complained last year, United Health Group stop marketing a plan to seniors that left them thinking they were fully covered when they only had supplemental coverage.

Last year, hospital executives raided big insurance companies in a national survey. Aetna was best. Well Point second worse. United Health Group was worst. Favorable, eight percent, unfavorable, 91 percent.

United Health Group has reportedly hit small businesses and consumers with regular double-digit rate hikes recently, far out-stripping inflation. In 2007, United Health Group denied, but agreed to settle, claims of handling patient claims improperly in at least 37 states.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I tried to explain to them that if I do not have this, I will die. And the only response she gave me was OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: President Obama is now asking United Health Group for advice on how to reform health care. He met with Hemsley twice this May. On June 1st, lead senators on health care asked Senator Kent Conrad to come up with an alternative to the public option. Three days later, Senator Conrad met with Hemsley, and top United Health Group lobbyists Simon Stevens.

Conrad has since that meeting led an effort to create non-profit medical cooperatives, "Business Week" reported. "With less heft than a proposed national plan, the state medical cooperatives would pose a far weaker competitive threat to private insurers."

Conrad said the idea of co-ops came out of conversations in my office. Senator Conrad`s office told COUNTDOWN, quote, "you`re barking up the wrong tree. Co-ops were not discussed. The senator met with him for 15 minutes to discuss care coordination, and how that could lead to both cost savings and better health care outcomes."

"Investment News" reports a public option would benefit insurers who could handle the cost of care coordination. "Only the largest insurers, such as Aetna, Well Point and United Health Group could do that."

Late this Spring on the Finance Committee, which Conrad sits, it was reportedly planning to have you pick up 24 percent of your medical bills on top of your premiums. But then, quote, "Stevens and his united health care colleagues urged a more industry friendly ratio."

The Finance Committee decided that now that you will pay 35 percent of your medical bills on top of your premiums.

Last year United Health Group made a profit of five billion dollars. Thus, in a dozen years in United Health Group`s employ, Mr. Hemsley total compensation has been valued at three quarters of a billion dollars.



So far.