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e-Alert — COVID-19 – UnitedHealth Group Offers Relief During the COVID-19 Pandemic

By May 19, 2020No Comments

Background

UnitedHealthcare will be providing more than $1.5 billion in assistance, which includes customer premium credits. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic many people have been unable to access routine or planned care visits. With this being said, UnitedHealthcare has seen a much lower amount of medical care delivered than was anticipated when pricing was first established.

Summary

The UnitedHealthcare commercial fully insured individual and employer customers credits range from 5% to 20%, which will be applied to premiums in June. This is dependent upon the type of plan the individual and employer have.

Those who carry the UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plans will be granted special permission to waive specialist and primary physician cost sharing, through at least September.

UnitedHealthcare will additionally expand its Housing+Health and homeless support programs
for those who carry a UnitedHealthcare Medicaid plans, in hopes to provide individuals with canned goods and those who need access to baby formula, and quicken the rate at which state partners and critical providers receive funds in order to serve its people.

These efforts by UnitedHealth Group are to provide guidance and strength to those in need during this COVID-19 pandemic, by providing clinical, analytics and technological expertise to expand coverage, stabilize the health care system, protect the health care workforce, and assist those affected the most by this pandemic. Other actions will include:

  • Waiving cost-sharing for COVID-19 testing and treatment.
  • Accelerating nearly $2 billion to health care providers to support liquidity needs.
  • Initially investing more than $70 million to help communities in need and protect the health care workforce.
  • Significantly expanding access to telehealth and redeploying 10,000 Optum clinicians to expand telehealth capabilities.
  • Converting company cafeterias to provide more than 75,000 meals a week for people in need and keeping our cafe team at work.
  • Pioneering a noninvasive, self-administered COVID-19 test that streamlines testing, reduces personal protective equipment usage and increases safety of health care workers.
  • Simplifying access to care by reducing prior authorization requirements.
  • Providing a special enrollment period for fully insured customers to allow employees who did not opt in for coverage during the regular enrollment period to get coverage.
  • Launching a free nationwide emotional support line to manage the stress and anxiety caused by COVID-19.

Employers Next Steps

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