Key Issues


Modernizing Health Care: Innovation and Sustainable Solutions

UnitedHealth Group is committed to help people live healthier lives through innovations and sustainable solutions that address our fundamental health care challenges. We believe that health care modernization did not begin and must not end with the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and that universal coverage will be sustainable only if there is relief from the accelerating health care cost burden on American families and businesses.

We are actively working across the nation, at every level of government, on implementing sustainable solutions that support broader health care coverage, lower health care costs and improved care delivery. Our practical approach is rooted in six core principles aimed at creating a strong system that ensures every American has access to affordable, quality care:

  • Build upon the foundation of employer-based health coverage
  • Optimize public resources
  • Employ progressive approaches to health care benefits
  • Modernize the way care is delivered to improve affordability and quality
  • Modernize Medicare and Medicaid
  • Make technology an enabling force for better health care

Applying the lessons learned from our experience as one of the largest and most diverse participants in the health care system, we are working with partners in both the public and private sectors to identify and implement proven solutions to address our nation’s most pressing health care challenges. Working together, we can make health care work better.

Reducing Costs While Improving Quality of Care

Controlling costs while providing access to and delivery of high-quality care is a fundamental health care challenge in both the public and private sectors. Rising health care costs have hindered employers, individuals, and families from finding affordable coverage options that meet their health care needs. Solving this problem requires innovative thinking as well as a comprehensive understanding of how health care is delivered and reimbursed.

Focusing on the key cost drivers - such as the delivery of benefits (the substantial majority of every premium dollar we receive is used to pay claims) and the development and maintenance of a high-quality provider network - will help us tackle the root causes of rising health care costs.  Promoting competition and transparency help ensure affordability and choice for consumers, and will create new incentives for providers to improve their efficiency and quality.

As policymakers move forward in addressing the primary drivers of health care costs, we believe it’s important that they understand the underlying elements determining the insurance premium.  Meaningful health care modernization can occur only if solutions address the root causes of increasing costs.

Improving Access to Affordable Coverage and Enhancing Care Delivery

UnitedHealth Group is actively deploying innovative care models to improve access to affordable coverage in all 50 States, and our technology offerings - from consumer portals, enrollment facilitators, and care coordination programs, such as the Connected Care initiative to build the first national telehealth network - are helping to enhance consumer access to care.

To address inefficiencies in the delivery system, where too many patients receive fragmented and episodic care, we have designed pilot programs that offer patients a primary care physician to serve as a “medical home,” which has led to a decrease in emergency room visits by 29 percent, according to preliminary results.  We believe these models are critical to making the system work better.

Through these innovations, individuals benefit from more convenient access to a broad range of quality care services, when and where they need it.

Protecting and Strengthening Public Programs

UnitedHealth Group serves one-in-five Medicare beneficiaries nationwide, and we are the nation’s largest health care entity serving low-income individuals and families through programs like Medicaid and CHIP. But these vital public programs face large enrollment increases and funding challenges in the coming years. We believe that adopting the Medicaid managed care model, a proven approach that has resulted in improved care quality and cost savings in states such as Tennessee and New York, and preserving the benefits of the Medicare Advantage program will ensure the sustainability of public health programs by reducing avoidable costs and providing quality, coordinated care.  As Congress and the states begin to implement public program reforms, UnitedHealth Group is taking steps to communicate to policymakers the value of these innovative solutions.