Rate dispute between UnitedHealth and HCA in Texas, Colorado

cContract disputes between hospitals and health plans have become routine, but they are typically local in nature and affect a handful of hospitals and the people in the surrounding communities.

This last one is different. This involves the nation’s largest private health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, and the nation’s largest hospital chain, HCA Healthcare. If they cannot reach an agreement on prices by September 1, 38 hospitals and their affiliated physician groups and surgery centers in four states — Texas, Colorado, South Carolina and New Hampshire — would be out of network for UnitedHealthcare members. .

“This looks very much like a battle of the giants, because United: huge, HCA: huge,” said Morgan Henderson, director of analytics and research at The Hilltop Institute, a research group at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.”