"I'm going to continue to work to bust this up," Rep. Buddy Carter told UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty at a Wednesday hearing on Capitol Hill.
On Wednesday, the House and Senate held hearings on these failures of UnitedHealth Group with the company's CEO Andrew Witty.
House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers examined UHG's consolidation and size: "Under the United Health Group umbrella resides a health insurance company with more than 40 million covered lives across Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial markets. A PBM that managed $159 billion in drug spending as a provider group that owns roughly one in every 12 doctors in the United States, a bank that makes payday loans to providers. That's just a few of the vendors under your purview."
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana asked, "Is the dominant role of United too dominant because it is into everything, and messing up United messes up everybody?" He added, "My point is, the size of United becomes almost a too big to fail, and sure, because if it fails, it's going to bring down far more than it ordinarily would."
Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn said her office has been bombarded with calls from hospitals, pharmacies, and doctors hit by UnitedHealth cyberattack.
Rep. John Joyce of Pennsylvania said, "As we see increased consolidation in healthcare, I worry that incidents such as this will become increasingly more common. We have already seen consolidation drive up prices and decrease access to patient care. And now patients and physicians are encountering yet another cost."
Rep. Earl L. "Buddy" Carter of Georgia slammed UnitedHealth, which has gobbled up physician practices, surgery centers, pharmacy benefit managers, and more, saying: "You are the largest for-profit domestic health insurance company in the country as has been pointed out with over 10,000 physicians and owning your own pharmacy and one of the of the largest PBMs in the country. Can you explain how your company can justify these clear conflicts of interest?"
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