UnitedHealth’s Ingenix faces mounting legal troubles

Now, a consumer is raising the stakes a bit by attempting to get class action status for a suit against Ingenix itself. In the suit, which was filed in Connecticut, plaintiff Jeffrey Weintraub contends that he was defrauded by a conspiracy in which health plans calculate lowball, out-of-network rates using bogus Ingenix data. Weintraub also names UHG, Oxford health Plans, Aetna, Cigna and other insurers in the suit.

Meanwhile, the industry is still waiting for Cuomo to drop the other shoe. While New York’s AG has promised to sue Ingenix, he hasn’t done so yet. Cuomo has said that he is investigating an “industry-wide scheme perpetrated by some of the nation’s largest health insurance companies to defraud consumers.”

Between the criminal investigation and the civil law suit, we should be able to learn a great deal about the inner workings on the health insurance industry. Yum.