Social media quickly filled with claims about United Healthcare including the repeated claim that the insurer denied 32 % of it’s claims.
But where that number come from?
Verifying it is difficult because it is not clear how many claims are denied by insurers or what the 32 percent really means.
The number seems to come from the personal finance website Value Penguin, which published the number in May.
But it is not at all clear where they got the number from.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, which is a leading sources of healthcare news and follows the numbers talks about an industry wide denial rate for ACA insurance coverage and put it at 17 % for Medicare Denials the denial rate was 7.4%.