Health Plan Weekly

Lawsuits Target Big-Batch Claims Denials by Cigna, UnitedHealth

  • Aug 04
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    Aug 04, 2023

    In recent days, health plan members and the U.S. Dept. of Labor (DOL) filed lawsuits against The Cigna Group and UnitedHealth Group, respectively, over what they call unfair, systematic patterns of claims denials. Experts tell AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that the processes behind claims denials in the commercial space — and the purpose-built software that carriers use to adjudicate those claims — are likely to be the subject of intense legal and political scrutiny in coming years. 

    Plan members seeking to form a legal class filed a suit against Cigna in a California federal district court on July 24. The complaint centers on what it calls an “illegal scheme to systematically, wrongfully, and automatically deny” claims using “an algorithm known as PxDx” that Cigna “relies on…to automatically deny payments in batches.” 

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    • Peter Johnson

    Peter has worked as a journalist since 2011 and has covered health care since 2020. At AIS Health, Peter covers trends in finance, business and policy that affect the health insurance and pharma sectors. For Health Plan Weekly, he covers all aspects of the U.S. health insurance sector, including employer-sponsored insurance, Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage and the Affordable Care Act individual marketplaces. In Radar on Drug Benefits, Peter covers the operations of (and conflicts between) pharmacy benefit managers and pharmaceutical manufacturers, with a particular focus on pricing dynamics and market access. Before joining AIS Health, Peter covered transportation, public safety and local government for various outlets in Seattle, his hometown and current place of residence. He graduated with a B.A. from Colby College.

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