UnitedHealth Group

UnitedHealth Group

Ethics

Ethics are the moral philosophies that guide an individual or an organization’s activities. These principles define what is morally right and evil, and any organizations ought to abide by these ethical standards for it to develop a good brand and lure more clients. UnitedHealth Group is one of the organizations that I highly committed to achieving high ethical standards in terms of integrity, honesty, accountability, autonomy, fidelity, justice, and openness. The firm’s ethical statement makes it clear that it believes in having good relationships with stakeholders, clients, regulators, employees, and other healthcare personnel. Honesty and integrity are the core values that guide its ethics in operations (Sroka and Lőrinczy, 2015). Over the years, the firm has had rough times in maintaining its ethical standards due to some cases that led to lawsuits and affected their brand. For instance, in 2006, the stock exchange committee launched an investigation into the UnitedHealth group’s directors and management actions of backdating stock options. These investigations were an indication that the firm was fraudulent and not paying revenue taxes as required. The move was clearly against the firm’s ethical principles of honesty and integrity. The directors of the firm got instigated with illegalities of backdating these stocks. This scandal led to the resignation of the then chairman and CEO of the firm, William McGuire, to resign and relinquish stock options and repay 468 million dollars to settle the backdating prosecution. This case was against the ethical aspect of integrity and honesty.

The other ethical issue in the UnitedHealth group came about during the acquisition of QSSI, which was a publicly owned firm. UnitedHealth Group lied for them to get themselves a better outcome since the QSSI platform would help them in their operations. The ethical aspect that the firm violated was the one on integrity and honesty because all through the process of acquisition of the firm, UnitedHealth Group was quiet. It kept the purchase a big secret from the public and the government. Their intentions for the addition of the firm were to gain access to the public health database, which would help them have a competitive advantage. This action gets explained by the Kantianism model of ethics, which emphasizes doing an act that is acceptable to people but with a hidden agenda.

The other ethical issue we see in the operations of the UnitedHealth group is the support of president Barrack Obama’s presidential candidature and the lobbying for his Affordable Healthcare Care Act in 2010. The firm supported and donated over 2.5 million dollars to lobby for the act’s success (Mboga, 2017). However, its intentions were not on improving the lives of people but rather to make profits. This aspect got confirmed in 2014 when the firm announced its entry in the Affordable Care Act as an insurance provider. Therefore, there was initially a conflict of interest in support of the initiative. The firm’s entry was a confirmation of its hidden agenda.

Just recently, there have been cases of malpractice within their insurance policies. It is as if united healthcare has been attempting to trick their customers when it comes to insurance policies. In 2018, the company received a fine of $2.5 million for several insurance law violations. There was a case where they were sending patients for hemophilia services to a provider that the state had not approved (Livingstone, 2018). In their defense, the company indicated that it was an isolated error due to poor customer service. This was a direct admission of the negligence of their ethical principles and code of conduct.  It is also against the legal requirements of all states and, therefore, a breach of ethics in the company. It all boils down again to the lack of honesty and integrity.

Social Responsibility

Social responsibility ethical framework suggests than businesses and other entities have the obligation of acting for the society’s benefits. Every organization or individual has to perform social responsibility to create a balance between the ecosystem and the community. UnitedHealth group understands the importance of engaging in social responsibility activities in creating a positive image for itself. For instance, the organization has a foundation called the United Healthcare Children’s Foundation that has been offering medical grants to families with children that have not covered their medical needs. This program has been running since 2007, and it has been helpful to many people since the families do not need to have subscribed to the UnitedHealth group’s insurance (Leipziger, 2017). Through this generosity, the firm has been capable of awarding over 3242 medical aid grants and a total of over 18600 medical grants valued at 45.1 million dollars. With this trend, the firm targets to offer its 20000th grant by 2020. The offering of such help to the community also creates a positive impact on the organization, and it may bring in more clientele.

Besides, the firm’s employees have been volunteering in many aspects meant to improve the health standards and lives of people both in the United States of America and other countries. In 2018, the employees of the organization volunteered hours, which were equivalent to $2.5 million. For instance, the workers have been volunteering to plant trees during their tree planting sessions to avert the effects of climate change. They have taken this quite seriously. An example of this seriousness is that they have managed to recycle 7,743 tons of paper and saved 129, 940 trees since they began their CSR objectives on matters concerning the environment. The employees also contribute money or part of their salary, which after collection gets given to humanitarian organizations. In 2018 UnitedHealth group and its employees contributed over 55 million dollars, which went to charitable causes (Leipziger, 2017). The employees also give their valuable time in building healthier communities; for example, they recently got involved in giving flu shots to the homeless in Chile. They also filled bags with school materials and gave them a donation to Flint. The workers have even gotten engaged in fighting hunger throughout the United States through their packed meals program. There has also been the aspect of creating awareness about the prevalence of certain diseases. Here, the employees make sure that they inform the society on measures to avert these illnesses in an attempt to maintain a healthy community and achieve positive health outcomes. The firm’s social responsibility activities have been fundamental in creating a positive image for the organization, which has further helped it to get new clients and contracts.

Concentration

A concentration strategy in business is an approach where a firm focuses on a particular market or product in its operations. Concentration is fundamental because it allows an organization to invest more funds in the marketing and production of that product. UnitedHealth Group, as a firm, has concentrated on providing medical insurance to individuals who are below the age of 65. One may ask why they focus on this age. However, insurance companies have the right to choose their concentration. They usually seek the help and intervention of actuaries before deciding to invest in such a population, which means questioning they would decide to go against their rights as an organization. Even though it offers medical insurance to people of other age brackets as well as pharmaceutical services, it has concentrated in those areas. The concentration has enabled the UnitedHealth Group to be capable of acquiring the experts in the field and invested in marketing their products (Bleibtreu and Stefani, 2017). Now, everyone who knows about the organization truly understands the age bracket that it re[resents. The benefits of this concentration can today get seen in the high amounts of revenue the firm is making as well as its profits. Today the firm is ranked the best insurance provider in the world and the 5th best firm according to Fortune 500 all due to concentration.