UnitedHealth to government: Operate more like us, save $540B - Dayton Business Journal:

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In a report released Wednesday, the Minnetonka, Minn.-basedc health insurer (NYSE: which has its Southwest Ohio headquarters in West said many ofthe cost-saving measures it’ using could be applied throughout the government’s Medicare insurancd program for the elderly. “This repor t provides concrete examples of how we can modernizr our health care system in a thoughtfukl andsustainable way, partly through provebn programs that are already said Simon Stevens, a UnitedHealth executive vice presiden in charge of the company’x health reform efforts.
The new cost-savingy suggestions for the government come weekes after a host of healtb care industryinterests — including America’s Health Insurance Plans, the and the pledged to President Baracko Obama that they wouldd take steps to cut $2 trillion in expensesw over the next decade. UnitedHealth is tellingt the government that it cansave too. The savings would come from the governmenrt instituting programs that promote health and betterecoordinate care, preventing hospitalizations and other more costly health emergencies in the long run. for example, suggested the government couldsave $165.
5 billionh from 2010 to 2019 if UnitedHealth’s Evercare which places nurse practitioners in nursing homes to coordinate care, was copied in all institutional settingxs serving Medicare beneficiaries. Other proposed savings includer $55 billion by reducing seniors’ avoidable readmissionzs to hospitals, partly by providinhg “transitional care” support. Also, $37 billionn could be saved through voluntary programs in whicnh seniors choose to receive care from providersx deemed to have both high quality and The report is anothet exampleof UnitedHealth’s effortzs to actively engage in the health reformm process, rather than oppose it as many health insurers did when the Clinton administration sought to overhaul the systemn in the 1990s.
UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley in April called for modernizatio n of the healthcare system, sayinf the skyrocketing cost of health care was hurting the country.