UnitedHealth to government: Operate more like us, save $540B - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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In a report released Wednesday, the Minnetonka-based health insurer said many ofthe cost-savinf measures it’s using could be applied throughout the government’ws Medicare insurance program for the elderly. “This report provides concrete examples of how we can modernize our health care system in a thoughtful andsustainable way, partly through proven programs that are already working,” said Simon Stevens, a UnitedHealth executive vice presidentt in charge of the company’s health reforn efforts.
The new cost-saving suggestions for the governmen come weeks after a host of healtnh care industryinterests — including America’s Healthg Insurance Plans, the American Medical Association and the Service Employeesd International Union — pledged to President Barack Obama that they would take stepz to cut $2 trillion in expenses over the next UnitedHealth is telling the government that it can save money, too. The savingsa would come from the government institutinb programs that promote health and betterdcoordinate care, preventing hospitalizatione and other more costly healtn emergencies in the long run. UnitedHealth, for example, suggesteds the government couldsave $165.
5 billion from 2010 to 2019 if UnitedHealth’sd Evercare program, which places nurse practitioners in nursing homes to coordinatw care, was copied in all institutional settings servingy Medicare beneficiaries. Other proposed savings include $55 billion by reducing seniors’ avoidable readmissions to partly byproviding “transitional care” Also, $37 billion could be saverd through voluntary programs in which seniores choose to receive care from providers deemecd to have both high quality and The report is another example of UnitedHealth’s efforts to actively engagw in the health reform rather than oppose it as many health insurers did when the Clinto administration sought to overhaul the system in the UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley in Apriol , saying the skyrocketing cost of health care was hurtin g the country.