UnitedHealth Faces Legal Suit From NY Attorney General

(NewsVisual, powered by IntellectSpace )-- UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE: UNH) may be soon be caught up in a legal battle as the New York attorney general announced that his office has plans to sue the managed healthcare company.

The suit will come as part of a larger investigation into the practices of the health insurance industry regarding payment rates for hospitals and doctors that are not part of their network. Complaints have long been made about the typical payment programs, where out-of-network doctors and hospitals are supposedly being unfairly reimbursed far below in-network members, due to unrealistic standards. While other health insurers like Aetna, Cigna and Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield are also being investigated, UnitedHealth has become the primary target due to the fact that it owns and licenses the tool that rest of the industry uses to set their payment standards.

NewsVisual created an IntellectSpace Knowledge Map of the corporate connections of UnitedHealth’s Board of Directors who are undoubtedly experiencing the heat from the attorney general. Their experience and network relationships may be heavily relied upon in the next few weeks in combating the allegations.

As illustrated in this Knowledge Map, every Director on the board has at least one other major corporate affiliation in addition to UnitedHealth. The connections are extensive, with the Knowledge Map displaying key links based on current board memberships and past and present executive positions with other companies.

Robert L Ryan was previously the Senior Vice President and CFO of Medtronic and currently is a Director at companies like Hewlett Packard and General Mills; and Robert J Darretta is the retired Vice Chairman and CFO of Johnson & Johnson. Other notable connections link UnitedHealth to Goldman Sachs and FannieMae through James A Johnson, Aramark and Pepsi through Thomas H Kean, and AstraZeneca, PPG and Caremark through Michele J Hooper.

The Directors at UnitedHealth have a wealth of connections to multiple industries, which could provide additional sources of experience and insight into the best strategies for combating the legal claims of the attorney general.

Click here or copy this link into your Internet Explorer browser for an interactive version of this IntellectSpace Knowledge Map: http://nv.intellectspace.com/ispace/GuestMonitor.aspx?id=86d853dc-df3b-4ab9-a86b-f5e36a753c95

See article by Vanessa Fuhrmans and Theo Francis in The Wall Street Journal