“It happened over and over that for an item that should have been reimbursed at $250, United had listed said it only reimbursed the company $5, and so on, for many other matches.”
United’s published rates matched a provider’s real contracts 2% of the time. Aetna managed about 45%. Humana split its files across 11,000,000 pieces and then rate-limited the downloads. Insurers call these rates trade secrets, and wrong data that nobody can verify is the next best thing to secrecy.