UnitedHealth Moves Toward 20 Million Cards for Claims, Payments

UnitedHealth Group is on track to issue as many as 20 million cards that consumers can one day use for a dual purpose: to handle eligibility verification and other point-of-care payment transactions and as a debit card to electronically access funds from a health-savings account. To date UnitedHealth has issued about 15.8 million magnetic-stripe cards that consumers can use at more than 400,000 United-affiliated provider offices, primarily physician locations and pharmacies. Of that total, about 100,000 have a debit capability that allows the user to automatically access funds in a flexible-spending or health-savings account. While that figure may seem low, UnitedHealth, through its Exante Bank and a relationship with MasterCard International, expects to issue as many as 600,000 more cards with a debit function in 2005, and possibly several million more over the next few years as more employers and third-party administrators offer dual-purpose cards to their employees who must now pay more out-of-pocket for health care. “We are starting down this path and will see significant volume begin to build in 2006,” says Nick Santoro, chief executive of UnitedHealth Consumer and Financial Services, which is overseeing the card program. In the works, Santoro says, are new programs where consumers will use their UnitedHealth cards and identification numbers to access online statements and set up online bill-payment programs. UnitedHealth, one of the nation's largest health-care payment companies, is aggressively pushing its card program and point-of-sale technology in provider offices as a means to help its employers give their employees more payment options as they cope with consumer-driven health care, which forces users to select–and pay for–more of their own coverage. Health cards aren't new. Employers, insurance carriers, and third-party benefits administrators have been issuing paper or plastic identification cards for years. But as payments and claims-processing technology improves and more employers offer health-savings accounts, Santoro says most magnetic-stripe health-care cards in the future will serve as an electronic mechanism to process payment transactions and pay for health-care.