You may be living under a rock as most of the press is with watching subsidiary actions of big corporations and this one here is huge. Of late some are now brought under the Optum umbrella so they may or may no longer show as separate subsidiaries as they 
have on SEC filings, but again that’s not all of the interests here as there are several subsidiaries of the corporation that own like 51% controlling interest in other doctors and surgeons groups across the US, ahs been going on for years, just flat out hiding in plain site and all the actions are taking place with subsidiaries as they can move and participate in areas of business that would seem questionable by a corporation.
Here in southern California anyway, so many of the big IPAs have sold out to United or Optum, the subsidiary and the names are kind of interchangeable as it’s all the same company wanting profits for shareholders. It is any wonder doctors are fleeing from such organizations when they get the chance? Mostly it is just another management system with an extensive analytics and software process, same thing we see all over and kind of what’s driving the health system to go broke as at some point it has to give a little bit and a decision made as to when do you have enough relevant data? Here’s another interesting post below and you can see what’s going on here with Dignity, again a new company with Optum at the control to generate some additional revenues for Dignity Hospitals.
United Healthcare Adding Yet One More Subsidiary to the Very Large Number of Subs They Already Own/Operate-Optum and Dignity Healthcare (A System Wide Cerner EHR Client) Form New Venture Called Optum 360–Subsidiary Watch
It’s not really about better care but if they can wrap around analytics and show that there’s some non linear values they can impact, they go for it. We all know too that United and their subsidiaries make a lot of money selling our consumer data and de-identified data whenever they can. If Walgreens makes 1-2 billion a year, just imagine what these folks make selling your data. Would it not be nice to see every company that sells your data? We already have these folks buying up your credit card data to analyze and a lot more, using algorithms to evaluate your voice at call centers. If you want to know more click here to see a little campaign I started to get some transparency going so we know who all the data sellers are by licensing and these folks would require a ton of licenses when you bring in all their subsidiaries.
I had to almost laugh and I did blog about an article in the LA Times with lawyers saying United has to rely on accurate bills from hospitals and doctors regarding the lap band cases which are all over the place when in fact Optum/United sells more anti-fraud processes and software than Carter has pills, but again an illustration front out on how ignorance of company subsidiary actions plays out in the news. You better look at what’s going on there too and sad but journalists don’t’ seem to get that part of it or ask someone in the industry who knows, me someone else:) You can read more below on that one and the hilarious defense from their lawyers on that one. Who’s going to dupe the duper you could say.
Lap Band Surgeries Go Full Circle With Lawsuits–Now United Who’s Being Sued, Files Case Against Company Who Provided the Advertising and Services
It’s all about money and I don’t know the financials of MedSynergies and if they needed the money or not or were given an offer they couldn’t refuse? In in the LA and Orange County area it’s like called the “United Manifesto” here with working relationships, one is MemorialCare and they live in the same buildings and own their doctors and management companies too, so MDs are stuck with no way to turn there if they want to be in network and with complex contracts here, get paid at rates less than Medicare, so I don’t know what the MDs at this company might have to look forward too now. There’s also big questions as well about the ethics of an insurer owning a hospice company and there’s a federal lawsuit coming on that soon due to whistle blowers.
Feds Decide to Intervene, File Their Own Lawsuit Against Optum (United Healthcare) Hospice Services Relative to Whistleblower Fraud Cases Already Submitted- Pay for Performance Issues With Hospice Performance and Medicare Fraud At the Core
It’s also interesting too that old Zeke Emanuel who wrote the article about why he wants to die at 75 is a huge walking, talking United commercial, just search the web and he’s still writing policy, very scary indeed at the Center for American Progress where our Health policies are written while they create more cases to syphon more money from the Feds. We’re just flat out stuck with all the quantitated madness United sells one way or another and nobody can really check proprietary code for any type of accuracy here but the ones that CMS are using where there’s no doubt where United was their mentor are failing. I like good analytics that can help me with decisions but I’m also aware of those that just make profits and really don’t help causes too and there’s both out there. Here’s an example of what Zeke is doing.
Again I have been getting an earful of late from a former CMS employee, and again nothing really secret here but just telling me about how United got so infiltrated at CMS going back to the Lois Quam days when Hillary brought her in as she was the #2 person at United and the door has been open ever since for more to come in. Just look at who's working at CMS today.
HHS With New Burwell Appointment Adds A Little Splash of Wal-Mart to the United Healthcare Model Being Used for Just About Everything We See And Read Today…
In addition we keep seeing all the Medicare Advantage doctors being fired across the country and since CMS caught the risk fiddler automated algorithms used for 5 years by insurers, that means there’s around $14 billion less to be paid to insurers this year and it was said to be called “fraud” by the CMS auditors. So again if you have not paid attention to how companies in plain site like this grow and gain so much control, you might want to start as here’s one more added to the huge list of subsidiaries.
CMS Discovers That Insurers Offering Medicare Part D “Really Know To Sharp Shoot A Model With Adjusting Risk For Profit”, A Common Everyday Occurrence in Financial Markets…
In short, this is all about money and the care we get just has to adjust to the “Money Ball” theme here, behind the scenes pretty much running HHS and CMS in many areas. It is what it is and I said a long time ago they need some quants at CMS 
and at HHS as I made my point in 2009 that insurers would just walk all over Sebelius as she would be no contest to understand how business intelligence algorithms and analytics work. About a year ago I did a post about how insurers hide under the radar and I have a lot of links there to subsidiaries, government contractors the company owns and more and you use the link below if you like but that’s not all of it by any means.
Health Insurance Business Under the radar With Tiered Subsidiaries–Where All the Action Takes Place With Mergers, Acquisitions and Profit Centers-Subsidiary Watch
We’re all going to have a long awful lifestyle coming forward doing the dance of the algorithms and if you like go visit the Killer Algorithms page and you can see how all of this came to be and how you too get duped. Good healthcare has become a secondary focus when the healthcare profit algorithms come out to play in the markets as they do. BD
Algo Duping and the Subsequent Attacks of the Killer Algorithms…(from folks smarter than me)
UnitedHealth Group Inc said on Tuesday it agreed to buy MedSynergies, which manages physician practices, adding about 9,300 doctors to the hospital and health system services that its Optum technology-based business currently serves.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
UnitedHealth, the nation's largest health insurer, has been expanding beyond its core business of managing care for large employers and the government's Medicare and Medicaid programs through its fast-growing Optum business.
Optum clients include about 4,000 hospitals such as the Kaiser Permanante and Dignity Health systems. With the acquisition it will expand its reach to manage doctors and other healthcare professionals who are part of the 4,000 systems as well as add new systems like the Catholic Health Initiatives and Texas Health Resources.
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