DOJ files lawsuit to stop UnitedHealth, Change Healthcare merger

WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice, along with attorneys general in Minnesota and New York, have filed a lawsuit to stop UnitedHealth Group’s proposed $13 billion acquisition of Change Healthcare. 

The civil complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges the deal would harm competition in commercial health insurance markets, as well as in the market for a technology used by health insurers to process health insurance claims and reduce health care costs. 

“Quality health insurance should be accessible to all Americans,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “If America’s largest health insurer is permitted to acquire a major rival for critical health care claims technologies, it will undermine competition for health insurance and stifle innovation in the employer health insurance markets. The Justice Department is committed to challenging anticompetitive mergers, particularly those at the intersection of health care and data.” 

The complaint alleges the proposed transaction would give United access to a vast amount of its rival health insurers’ competitively sensitive information, giving it an unfair advantage and harming competition in health insurance markets. The proposed transaction also would eliminate United’s only major rival for first-pass claims editing technology — a critical product used to efficiently process health insurance claims and save health insurers billions of dollars each year — and give United a monopoly share in the market. 

UnitedHealth Group’s subsidiaries include UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurer in the United States. United’s revenues were $288 billion in 2021. 

Change Healthcare is an independent health care technology company providing health care analytics, software, services and data to health care providers, health insurers and other software and services firms in the health care industry. Its revenues were $3.4 billion in 2021.