Cassidy Questions UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty During Senate Finance Hearing

um Mr Woody thank you for being here uh and thanks for the conversation you and I've had prior to this first let me acknowledge as I spoke I'm a doc as I spoke to doctors back home the the kind of uh worst case has passed and many have said that it's resolved so let me credit you for the hard work you've done right that does kind of present a different set of questions please um One you mentioned that United is waving prior authorization essentially but change handles lots of claims for other insurers um and as we know sometimes prior o is denied retrospectively retroactively um so surgery will be approved and then at a later point it's unapproved and the dollars are CL clawed back um some of the docs say we don't know the whether the shoe will drop in the future whether it's a Signa that that will have a problem with the prior off process Etc um to what degree has United work with other insurers to address the uncertainty regarding prior authorization and to what degree would United uh hold harmless to Doc who is penalized if you will because of the the Damage Done to the prior system uh through this from another insurer Senator Cassy thank you very much for the question and i' very much appreciated the time you've spared to talk through some of these issues with me and I actually uh followed up after our last conversations on some of these from a United healthc Care perspective I'd like to confirm that when somebody applies for a prior authorization and it's granted we never go back to contradict it we never go back in time to change it if they've if they've already acquired that to your broader point we are very very supportive of efforts to modernize and enhance uh uh prior authorization in ways that can be much less burdensome on the system and much more effective in terms of ensuring patients get access to Safe yes but as regards the insurers in this particular process if if change was an intermediary with Sigma I keep using them because they come to mind um and there was an issue of Prior o how will that be handled so the in that situation that would be a signal responsibility as United reached out to sign to try and kind of you know smooth it over kind of in this period in which changes the ability of change to provide that entral function has been brought down so so thank you I'm I'm clearer with the question now um let me reassure you that we've made clear that where people have acted in good faith during any outage so for example uh a pharmaceutical was dispensed by a pharmacist without getting authorization they thought that was okay there was no system to check we are honoring all of that we even if it's through Sigma we will cover that then let me ask you and this is a broader question and something for this committee to consider um in our conversations and I gather on an earnings call U you pointed out that um when asked about the breach the Cyber attack was paradoxically a validation of the size and scope of United's business practice I've been told Washington Post article that 5% of US GDP flows through United every day now yes but if you read somebody by by Nicholas T he he would say that the fact that you're so big and so dominant presents a special vulnerability and that yes you have the Deep Pockets by which to address this but the very fact that you're so big means it had a wide ranging ripple effect that was outsized um and so I think for us we would have to ask uh is the dominant role of United to dominant because it's into everything and messing up United messes up everybody Senator thank you for the question I think it's really important to be clear that the change footprint and activity was exactly the same on the day it was attacked from before was acquired by United Health Group it didn't change because of United Health Group yes but if we try but I don't want to limit our imagination to just change uh if 5% of our nation's GDP goes through United every day then is there something else that could be um incurred upon United that would have even farther reaching effects so as we look across the whole of united we continue to be as always focused on how we defend and protect the organization we look to how we can upgrade organiz that's not my point my point is is the size of United become a uh it's almost say too big to fail insure be because if it fails it's going to bring down far more than it ordinarily would I don't believe it it is because actually despite our size uh for example we own no hospitals in America we do not we do not own any drug manufacturing but don't I know that yall own like some incredible percentage of physician practices now uh actually we employ less than 10 ,000 Physicians uh hospitals Across America employ 400,000 Physicians we contract and affiliate with the further 880,000 Physicians who voluntarily choose to work alongside our optim colleagues so we we're very proud of the Physicians who work for us uh but often times uh I think people confuse the Affiliated and contracted Physicians with the employed Physicians where we we employ less than 1% of doctors in America I'm out of time thank you are you Senator C

Channel: Senator Bill Cassidy

Views: 890

Keywords:

Id: As7XBkFWy5U

Length: 5min 28sec (328 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024