Just take note of the most recent news release on their 4th quarter profit.
http://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/Investors/~/media/2B5EEC6F00F446AC9051674E259BA80B.ashx
To: United HealthCare, Corporate National and Local offices
Friday, February 20, 2015
To Whom It May Concern,
After years of providing dermatological care for patients who possess health insurance from United Healthcare, this letter serves as your notification that I am resigning from your “provider panel” for all the networks and products you offer. I will no longer serve as a physician providing care to patients under United Healthcare. As of today, I am severing our relationship without cause, with three months’ notice per customary protocol.
I will communicate this to my patients currently enrolled with United Health Care. However, 90 days from today, beginning on May 20, 2015 I must not be listed on your online provider search engine, website, nor portals; nor listed as a provider in any print or electronic communication with patients nor the public at large after that date.
My experience as a physician with you has been extremely frustrating in the past 18 months. As long as you collude with the federal government, you have no risk and considerable profit, and billions of dollars are being siphoned that should have gone directly to patient care. Your medical care ratio ending in 2014 is 79.8%, meaning that 79.8% of the income from premiums is devoted to payment for medical claims. Where does the other 21% go? Perhaps in efforts such as expanding Optum; paying dividends to your shareholders and bonuses to your CEO; lobbying the government for more bailouts; or hosting coffee talks and sending glossy brochures to enroll more Americans, ignorant of your mercenary and crony capitalism ways.
I have witnessed the decline of the public perception and personal experience with the United Health Care company as a whole, where patients had reasonable cost coverages and the website was easy to navigate. The trend for the past several years has been of skyrocketing deductibles, copayments and prescription costs, a cumbersome website that doesn’t verify coverage in a reliable real time fashion-- then we’re left with unanswered questions in the medical office because a person cannot be reached on your byzantine phone system. Shame on you for denigrating physicians, dismissing us summarily, without an explanation from your Medicare Advantage networks, leaving thousands of patients in the lurch and without alternatives, more confused than ever about their insurance status. Your reasons were couched publicly and online as promoting quality initiatives, but they were clearly cost control measures where patients were sacrificed and they did not obtain medical care, thus saving you money and promoting profits. Not one person from your company explained or ensured a transition would happen. Patients still are confused about this, 18 months after my letter was received and 1 year after it took effect, and they have been lied to and manipulated as a statistic point in your pursuit of federal dollars. I see what you are, and I want no part of it.
Costs have escalated while benefits, and reimbursement, have plummeted. In light of onerous deductibles, complicated online password-requiring preauthorizations and online/paperwork deluge for pathology or lab testing, I find I can no longer practice medicine while under your provider list. Instead I am a navigator of insurance/medical/pharmacy bureaucracies.This is not coherent with my professional mission nor values. Thus, I am tendering my resignation from all of your networks.
Sincerely,
Dr. G
