ALLENTOWN, Pa. (WFMZ) — Thousands of patients who receive medical care through Lehigh Valley Health Network and have United Healthcare insurance will no longer be in-network starting this Sunday.<\/p>\n
After more than two years of failed contract negotiations between Lehigh Valley Health Network and UnitedHealthcare, 50,000 patients will now have to go elsewhere.<\/p>\n
“UnitedHealthcare refused to reach a true agreement that reflects the true costs of providing high quality care,” said LVHN in a recorded statement.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for UnitedHealthcare said in part, “LVHN informed us it will not counter our proposal, choosing to maintain its demands for a more than 20% price hike in the first year of our contract.”<\/p>\n
The failure to reach a deal has patients across the Lehigh Valley fuming.<\/p>\n
Jennifer Fink tells us she and her family have built relationships with their providers at LVHN over the years and are now grappling with staying and paying out-of-network fees, stopping care and waiting the situation out or switching providers.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been with the network for 25 plus years. I was an employee there for 12 years. All of our providers are with them. This is basically saying ‘take those 50,000 patients, we don’t want them.’ That’s kind of what they’re telling us. They’re telling us we don’t care about you, the 50,000 patients, plus the patients that were affected in January from Medicare, go ahead. Go to our competitor,” Fink said.<\/p>\n
Matthew and Kim Booth are disappointed with both sides.<\/p>\n
“Mad, angry, disappointed. After 30 years I don’t want to go find a new network to find a provider. It’s ridiculous. It’s a blame game back and forth. Lehigh Valley blames UnitedHealthcare. UnitedHealthcare blames Lehigh Valley so who do you believe? Nobody seems to care about patient care anymore. It’s all about the money,” Kim Booth told 69 News.<\/p>\n
UnitedHealthcare says members in active treatment for conditions like pregnancy or cancer, will continue receiving in-network benefits with their provider for 90 days after they went out of network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. (WFMZ) — Thousands of patients who receive medical care through Lehigh Valley Health Network and have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,232,153,155,154,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-174451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-allentown-area","10":"tag-bethlehem","11":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","12":"tag-bethlehem-news","13":"tag-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}