UnitedHealthcare Owes Fees, Penalties for Wrongly Denied Claim

A woman who sued UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co. for failing to fully cover a procedure related to an earlier weight-loss surgery won her appeal in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The insurer “effectively stonewalled” the patient by repeating the same rationale for denying her claim in a “stream of cookie-cutter denial letters,” the Ninth Circuit said Monday in an unpublished opinion. United refused to pay a $59,000 medical bill submitted by a surgical assistants’ group without giving the patient an “understandable description” of the information she could submit to have the claim reconsidered, the court said. ...