UnitedHealthcare has agreed to pay a $2.5 million settlement as a class action resolution, and these effects could lead to payments of up to $1,000.
A federal judge of Washington last month granted preliminary approval for a settlement between a healthcare company and a class of claimants under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The settlement covers classes of over 12,000 individuals.
Here are some things you need to know about UnitedHealthcare class action lawsuits and how to file a claim before the deadline.
What is a class action lawsuit?
USA Today explained that class action lawsuits involve one or more people suing others with similar claims as themselves. Once a class action lawsuit is approved, all class members will be awarded, except for those who opt out of the group.
What is the UnitedHealthCare Class Action lawsuit?
The lawsuit alleges that UnitedHealthCare violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. This is a federal law that prohibits businesses from making telemarketing calls without the prior permission of the recipient, using artificial or pre-designated voice messages.
According to top-class actions, the settlement claims UnitedHealthcare made these calls repeatedly, even after class members requested that they be removed from the call list.
“Last month, the parties reached a deal and accused UnitedHealthCare Services Inc. of repeatedly calling marketing messages in 2019, the $20,000 Service Award against Lead plaintiff Frantz Samson, who accused UnitedHealthCare Services Inc. of notifying the company of the wrong number. “We were asked to remove it from the call list,” the outlet wrote.
Who qualifications for the settlement payment?
According to the settlement, individuals who received one or more pre-delegated calls between January 9, 2015 and January 9, 2019 would be eligible to receive UnitedHealthcare Medicare and retired non-licensed retention teams, communities and states. They were either the retention team, or the Medicare and post-retirement collection team, and were not UnitedHealthCare members or third parties authorized to receive such calls.
How much is the payment?
The settlement estimates that payments are between $350 and $1,000 per individual.
The final amount depends on the number of requests submitted.
How do I submit a request?
Eligible individuals will notify you to receive a settlement notification by email or email and request payment. The notification included a unique login code and password for submitting a complaint online.
Claims can be made online via electronic form or by downloading PDFs and printing them, and mailing them to the claim.
When is the deadline to file a request?
Claims must be submitted by Tuesday, April 15th.
When will you receive payment? What happens next?
The court will need to decide on Friday, June 20th whether to grant final approval of the settlement.
What happened to change Healthcare’s data breach?
The settlement could have affected approximately 190 million UnitedHealth Group customers following a record data breaches.
In February 2024, Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of Behemoth Global Health Company UnitedHealth, said that authorities noticed the deployment of ransomware on computer systems and began taking steps to stop the hack.
The following month they confirmed that “a significant amount of data was removed from the environment between February 17, 2024 and February 20, 2024.”
Customer identification, bank records, and health data were published by hackers. The affected individuals have already been in contact, and the final number of affected individuals will be confirmed at a later date.
According to USA Today, data breaches disrupt the healthcare industry as doctors and hospitals were unable to collect payments for weeks when computer systems went down.
Contributed by: Gretacross, USA Today
