Thursday, May 18, 2006

UnitedHealth Gets Subpoena, Lawsuit

We have posted frequently about the lavish compensation given to Dr William McGuire, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest health insurers/ managed care organizations in the US, the contrast between his compensation and the company's stated mission to provide affordable health care, questions about the timing of the granting to Dr McGuire of now $1.6 billion worth of stock options, and concerns about conflicts of interest affecting the company's governance. (See most recent post here, contains links to earlier posts.)

Now further questions have surfaced about the stock options. Various news services (e.g., TheStreet.com here) have reported that the company has been served a subpoena from a US Attorney and received a request for information from the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) related to these stock options. On top of that, UnitedHealth was just sued by Omnicare over how United dealt with Omnicare vis a vis its Medicare prescription drug business (see Reuters).

It does make one wonder just what the priorities of UnitedHealth Group's leadership were.

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