Regulators, Lawmakers Attempting to Block Sale of Home Health Company to UnitedHealth
By Consumers for Quality Care, on December 4, 2024
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and four state Attorneys General want to stop UnitedHealth Group from acquiring the home health company Amedisys, according to The New York Times.
Officials warn that if the deal is completed, it could reduce competition, raise prices, and hurt the quality of patient care, especially for seniors. “Unless this $3.3 billion transaction is stopped, UnitedHealth Group will further extend its grip to home health and hospice care, threatening seniors, their families and nurses,” said DOJ’s Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter.
UnitedHealth is one of the largest health care companies in the U.S., reporting $372 billion in revenue last year. Last year, it acquired another home-health company, LHC Group, in a $5.4 billion deal. It also owns its own billing and data-analytics company, controls one of the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in America, and oversees a sprawling network of subsidiaries that employ roughly 90,000 physicians. UnitedHealth’s vertical consolidation has allowed the company to control multiple segments of the health care industry, and they’ve used their market power to squeeze consumers for bigger and bigger profits.
This led the DOJ to investigate UnitedHealth’s business practices, specifically those that result in the company spending less money on consumer care. “We are challenging this merger because home health and hospice patients and their families experiencing some of the most difficult moments of their lives deserve affordable, high quality care options,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement. “The Justice Department will not hesitate to check unlawful consolidation and monopolization in the health care market that threatens to harm vulnerable patients, their families, and health care workers.”
Earlier this year, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) wrote a letter urging the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to scrutinize this deal, raising questions over the “growing trend of insurers buying up health care providers to reduce competition and pad their profits at the expense of their patients.” They also wrote that this “deal is clearly anticompetitive” and “would further entrench the company’s dominance” in the health care system.
The Biden administration has condemned these types of mergers before, arguing that whenever health care companies merge, consumers pay higher prices and receive lower quality care.
Decreased competition hurts consumers, often leading to fewer options for care and higher out-of-pocket costs. CQC urges regulators and lawmakers to scrutinize mergers in the health care industry and work to ensure that consumers do not foot the bill for anti-competitive practices.
