STAT+: House Democrats urge judge to advance UnitedHealth Medicare fraud case to trial
28 House Democrats are backing the Justice Department case that alleges UnitedHealth Group committed widespread Medicare Advantage fraud
Twenty-eight Democratic members of the House of Representatives are backing the Department of Justice’s case that alleges UnitedHealth Group committed widespread Medicare Advantage fraud by not eliminating unnecessary diagnosis codes of its members.
The Democrats urged the federal judge overseeing the case to reject a March recommendation from a special master to dismiss the case, and asked the judge in a legal filing to “allow this case to proceed to jury trial in a public courtroom.”
The lawsuit alleges UnitedHealth illegally kept Medicare overpayments even though the company knew people’s diagnoses were not supported in medical charts, leading to billions of dollars in unjustified payments. The lawmakers argued they have a direct interest in this case because they are responsible for legislating and funding the Medicare Advantage program, which covers 35 million older adults and people with disabilities — now a majority of all people on Medicare.
