STAT+: UnitedHealth investor lawsuit moves forward on allegations it ‘manufactured earnings’ to hide declining profits

Tara covers the business of health care. Her stories focus on hospitals, doctors, and how their business practices affect patients — especially when private equity gets involved. She also writes about health insurance and ideas for improving our broken health system. You can reach Tara on Signal at tarabannow.70.An investor lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group will move forward after a federal judge on Wednesday declined the company’s motion to dismiss allegations that it juiced its earnings to the tune of $3.3 billion in 2024 to conceal weakness in its Medicare Advantage business. It wasn’t all good news for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, though. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan dismissed most of the pension fund’s allegations that UnitedHealth’s leaders deceived investors about multiple aspects of their business in order to artificially inflate the company’s stock. Bryan agreed with UnitedHealth that most of the company statements CalPERS cited weren’t specific enough or represented typical promotional “puffery” that investors wouldn’t act on. One of the lawsuit’s central allegations was that the Minnesota-based conglomerate concealed an illegal practice of making its Medicare Advantage patients appear sicker on paper to siphon more money from the government. On that front, CalPERS cited the company’s statements that home visits kept its members healthy and that its clinicians made independent clinical decisions. In fact, reporting has since shown that UnitedHealth used those visits to add diagnoses to patients’ records for which they received no follow-up care and pressured its doctors to do the same using bonuses. . STAT+ Exclusive Story Already have an account? Log in This article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers Unlock this article — and get additional analysis of the financial innards of our health care system — by subscribing to STAT+. Already have an account? Log in View All Plans To read the rest of this story subscribe to STAT+. Subscribe