The Justice Division is focusing on UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) in an antitrust investigation, The Wall Road Journal reported Tuesday.

Particularly, the Division of Justice is interviewing matters surrounding the interactions between UnitedHealth Group and its healthcare division, Optum.

UnitedHealthcare is among the largest insurers within the nation. In the meantime, Optum is among the bigger supplier organizations within the nation. Now that each are below the identical umbrella, regulators have change into involved concerning the aggressive benefit UnitedHealth Group could have in sure markets.

“In current weeks, investigators have interviewed well being care representatives in industries the place UnitedHealth competes, together with doctor teams, based on folks with data of the conferences,” the WSJ report stated. “Throughout their interviews, investigators requested questions on, amongst different issues, sure relationships between the corporate's UnitedHealthcare insurance coverage unit and the Optum well being care unit, which, amongst different issues, owns doctor teams. Researchers have requested concerning the potential influence of the corporate's doctor group acquisitions on rivals and customers, the folks stated.

Optum and UnitedHealthcare have each claimed that they often work with one another's opponents and don’t do one another any favors.

This may occasionally or could not affect the house care market. UnitedHealth Group – and Optum – have been among the many most lively consumers of healthcare suppliers over the previous decade.

It entered into a house care deal when it acquired LHC Group – one of many nation's largest residence care and hospice suppliers – for $5.4 billion in February final 12 months. Then final June it agreed to purchase one other residence care big, Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED), for $3.3 billion.

The cope with Amedisys remains to be pending.

Though Optum would solely personal about 10% of the house care market with each LHC Group and Amedisys, it will nonetheless be the most important proprietor of residence care property within the nation.

Final October, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) requested antitrust regulators to take a more in-depth have a look at the Amedisys deal.

“We urge DOJ and FTC to intently monitor UnitedHealth's proposed acquisition of Amedisys and oppose the rising pattern of insurers buying healthcare suppliers to cut back competitors and enhance income on the expense of their sufferers,” Warren and Jayapal reportedly wrote in a letter to the Division of Justice (DOJ) on the time.