With Medicare Advantage plans, beneficiaries opt to receive their government-sponsored benefits through private health insurance companies. That means insurers, not Medicare, create the networks of doctors and hospitals where subscribers can receive care covered by taxpayer-supported Medicare plans.<\/p>\n
UnitedHealthcare, the nation\u2019s largest insurer, told the Star Tribune this week that it presented a contract on Oct. 15 for Fairview to sign, but Fairview declined, the company says. It argues the health system is now using patients as a bargaining chip during Medicare open enrollment, which began earlier this month.<\/p>\n
The health system is firing back, saying UnitedHealthcare made false claims by describing a proposed letter of agreement as a contract, without mentioning that it added <\/b>new conditions at the last minute that hadn\u2019t been agreed upon. Fairview didn\u2019t say what those conditions were, but said they would reduce transparency and \u201cweaken\u201d patient protections.<\/p>\n
Fairview says it has been, and remains, willing to sign a one-year agreement for 2026 <\/b>just for Medicare Advantage patients based solely on previously accepted terms, but UnitedHealthcare has insisted on simultaneous negotiations for a contract for Medicare beneficiaries and <\/b>commercial\/employer coverage.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnitedHealthcare is entitled to its own opinion, but not its own set of facts,\u201d Fairview said in a statement.<\/p>\n
More broadly, the health system asserted: \u201cWhat\u2019s happening here is part of a growing national issue: seniors across the country are facing disruptions as large, for-profit insurers walk away from communities or impose practices that delay and deny care.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Medicare Advantage plans, beneficiaries opt to receive their government-sponsored benefits through private health insurance companies. That means…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":329763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[210,1141,1142,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-329762","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115430582186066754","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}