UNITEDHEALTH GROUP INC

UnitedHealth Group Inc. agreed to pay $10 million to resolve allegations it discriminated against pregnant employees and those with pregnancy-related medical conditions by denying them reasonable accommodations.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued to block UnitedHealth Group's $13 billion acquisition of Change Healthcare, alleging the deal would give UnitedHealth control over a critical healthcare data clearinghouse and allow it to stifle competition.

UnitedHealth Group has accumulated $2.7 billion in total penalties across 449 violation records since 2000, according to ViolationTracker. The company faces an overlapping set of federal and state enforcement actions reflecting systemic issues across its insurance, data, and services businesses.

In December 2022, OptumInsight paid $15 million to settle allegations of accepting kickbacks from a laboratory company in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute. In 2024, the DOJ intervened in two separate False Claims Act lawsuits alleging UnitedHealth knowingly inflated Medicare Advantage risk adjustment payments — the DOJ estimates the government paid UHG more than $7.2 billion from 2009 through 2016 based on diagnosis upcoding. In July 2025, UnitedHealth disclosed it was cooperating with DOJ criminal and civil investigations into its Medicare billing practices. Separately, The Guardian documented that UnitedHealth allegedly paid bonuses to nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers of Medicare Advantage patients, saving UHG millions while risking patient safety. North Carolina fined UnitedHealthcare $3.4 million for balance billing violations, and Minnesota imposed a $450,000 fine for mental health parity failures. In a landmark case, UHC paid $15.6 million for violating the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act — the first DOL enforcement of the parity law against a health insurer. The pattern spans Medicare fraud, kickbacks, mental health parity violations, and systematic claims denial.