UPDATE: UHealth and UnitedHealthcare reach a deal on deadline day
Plus: CMS pays SNFs $882.74M more despite MedPAC's call for a 4% cut. The day's rules, money, and enforcement, sourced and tiered below.
Plus: CMS pays SNFs $882.74M more despite MedPAC's call for a 4% cut. The day's rules, money, and enforcement, sourced and tiered below.
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American Health Intel
Rules · Money · Medicine · Decoded daily
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| The Ledger |
Friday, July 31, 2026 |
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UPDATE: UHealth and UnitedHealthcare reach a deal on deadline day
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Plus: CMS pays SNFs $882.74M more despite MedPAC's call for a 4% cut. The day's rules, money, and enforcement, sourced and tiered below.
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Other Confidence: Medium
UHealth and UnitedHealthcare, the academic health system and the nation's largest insurer, reached a new multi-year contract today, the exact deadline this issue has tracked since July 27.
The agreement keeps more than 60,000 UHealth patients in-network across commercial, individual and Florida Medicaid plans. Financial terms, including the rate increase UHealth sought, were not disclosed.
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Why it matters
The deal avoided a network disruption for tens of thousands of patients, showing how public negotiation pressure can resolve a payer-provider standoff before a deadline.
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Rule Confidence: High
CMS just finalized an 882.74 million dollar Medicare payment increase for the nation's skilled nursing facilities, the industry housing millions of seniors in short-term rehab and long-term care.
The agency's own advisers at MedPAC had recommended a 4% rate cut instead, citing a 24.4% aggregate Medicare profit margin for freestanding nursing facilities in 2024. CMS proceeded with the increase anyway.
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Why it matters
CMS raised Medicare payments to nursing homes even after its own advisers said industry margins were already high, a sign the agency did not follow MedPAC's rate advice this cycle.
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334 Records | $19.6B Enforcement | 16 Deadlines | 100 Rules |
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