Patti Sheets Honig, a video editor at Fox 5 in New York, filed the complaint in 2022. The cost of seeing a specialist for chronic back pain has skyrocketed, leaving him with a bill of about $60,000.
Seeking an update on his complaint, Mr. Zietz Honig sent an article criticizing MultiPlan from Capitol Forum, a site focused on antitrust and regulatory news. Last March, her agency emailed her that her employer and insurance company Aetna had agreed to a “temporary exception” and made her additional payments.
The agency wrote that “unfortunately” the law “does not prohibit the use of third-party vendors” to calculate payments.
Meanwhile, her longtime pain specialist began demanding advance payment. To save money, Zietz Honig spaced out her appointments.
“I've been in a lot of pain lately,” she said, “so I go and pay.”
“It’s not real negotiation.”
As MultiPlan became more deeply integrated into major insurance companies, it pitched new tools and technologies that generated even higher commissions, and in some cases told insurers what its unknown competitors were doing, documents and interviews show. It became clear.
After meeting with MultiPlan executives in 2019, UnitedHealthcare's senior vice president said in an internal email that other insurers are making more extensive use of MultiPlan's aggressive pricing options, and that UnitedHealthcare He said there is a possibility that it will catch up.
“Although Mr. Dale did not specifically name the competitors, we were able to glean from his statements who they were,” said Dale White, then an executive vice president at MultiPlan. wrote executive Lisa McDonnell, referring to . She explained that Cigna, Aetna, and some of her Blue Cross Blue Shield plans appear to use her MultiPlan.