Data Did Not Drive Acquisition of Change, UnitedHealth Says

Unsealed briefs in the Department of Justice's case against the UnitedHealth Group and Change Healthcare merger solidify arguments on both sides in the antitrust case.

Federal Judge Carl Nichols grilled the Justice Department on Thursday over its claim that UnitedHealth Group's $13 billion acquisition of Change would suppress competition, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Nichols is expected to release a decision as early as this month but before the end of October.

The basis of the DOJ's case centers on the competitively sensitive data UnitedHealth would gain from its rivals through the acquisition uniting UHG subsidiary OptumInsight and Change, a healthcare technology company.

UnitedHealth argued it would not access this information due to firewalls within the company. It has incentives to protect other payers' data since Optum is a multipayer company, UnitedHealth said. While $92 billion of Optum's revenue came from internal revenue in 2021, $63 billion was from external revenue.

"These two organizations are [at] strictly [an] arm's length relationship," former UnitedHealth Group CEO David Wichmann said of UnitedHealthcare and Optum during last month's trial, according to court documents. Optum works with UHC as a customer, he said, "very similar to the way" Optum works with its other commercial customers.

Current UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty testified, "So again, first of all, that would be against the tone, the culture, the rules, everything we stand for in the organization. . . . And so I would absolutely not expect that to happen. And again, I would say if it ever did, it would be hugely destructive, not just to our reputation but to our economic interest, because customers are not going to come back to an organization that abuses their data in that way."

But it could happen, the DOJ argued. Once combined, there would be nothing to stop that data sharing, which to the DOJ's argument, represents an illegal merger.

No "firewall," "policy," "commitment" or "culture" would prevent United from using the data rights that it would acquire from Change to benefit itself, to the detriment of competition, the DOJ said in court documents.

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