How UnitedHealth’s Playbook for Limiting Mental Health Coverage Puts Countless Americans’ Treatment at Risk
Reporting Highlights
- An Insurer Sanctioned: Three states found United’s algorithmic system to limit mental health coverage illegal; when they fought it, the insurer agreed to restrict it.
- A Patchwork Problem: The company is policing mental health care with arbitrary thresholds and cost-driven targets, highlighting a key flaw in the U.S. regulatory structure.
- United’s Playbook Revealed: The poorest and most vulnerable patients are now most at risk of losing mental health care coverage as United targets them for cost savings.
An article from a month ago about United Heathcares problematic coverage, which I believe is relevant again.
Great write-up. This explains why so many of my provider friends tell me they want to go work at Starbucks or Target, which didn’t make sense at first because you still have to deal with the public. This gives some additional perspective.
You do but at the end of the day target or starbucks won’t randomly take back 3-12% of your gross income. They also pay you consistently. I like my job but there are a lot of times I get real fucking frustrated at a period where my pay is super low for an extended period of times. Insurance companies are also assholes about paying. To be fair most of the time they’re on top of shit but sometimes they’re not and there’s nothing I can do about it. Sometimes they’re weeks behind on payments and it’s just like, oh well, that sucks, hope you have savings! But if I’m late submitting billing to them they will often raise a stink about. and this can absolutely be one of the things that later becomes an issue during an audit that results in them clawing back a payment. 0 sympathy if I am overwhelmed but if theyre overwhelmed? Tough shit, I’m getting no pay that week.