A Delaware judge has dismissed UnitedHealth Group’s defamation lawsuit against The Guardian following the outlet’s reporting last year that said the insurer secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers for its Medicare Advantage members.
“We are delighted that Judge Scott has granted all of the Guardian’s motions to dismiss UnitedHealth’s lawsuit on the merits, a resounding victory for factual reporting and the First Amendment,” Kai Falkenberg, general counsel for The Guardian in the U.S., told Becker’s in an emailed statement. “Even after UnitedHealth’s lawsuit was filed, the Guardian did not back down, continuing to publish new detail in our investigation. Today’s decision is a vindication of the Guardian’s deeply-sourced, independent reporting, and a rejection of UnitedHealth’s bullying and intimidation tactics.”
UnitedHealth originally sued the Guardian in June 2025 over a May 21 article headlined “Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers.” In its complaint, the company called the outlet’s reporting “unquestionably defamatory” and alleged that 12 statements within the article were false.
The reporting centered on UnitedHealthcare’s Institutional Special Needs Plans, a type of Medicare Advantage policy the insurer sells to people who live in nursing homes. The company’s Optum arm places clinicians in participating homes to help manage those members’ care. The Guardian reported that UnitedHealth paid thousands in bonuses to nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers for those residents. The outlet said it reviewed thousands of confidential corporate and patient records, interviewed more than 20 current and former UnitedHealth and nursing home employees, and obtained an internal email showing supervisors had “budgets” for how many hospital admissions were “left” for residents. The Guardian also reported that UnitedHealth managers pushed nurse practitioners to persuade members to change their status to “do not resuscitate,” even when those residents wanted all available treatment.
“Even drawing all reasonable inferences in United’s favor, if the truth was written in the article as it is alleged in the complaint, it would not have a different effect on the average reader,” Judge Calvin Scott wrote in his July 20 opinion. “The Guardian … is not required to publish facts just because United would have preferred more favorable facts.”
UnitedHealthcare previously said its nursing home programs are designed to prevent “unnecessary, costly, and potentially harmful hospitalizations in favor of providing appropriate clinical care in the appropriate setting.”
“The U.S. Department of Justice investigated these allegations, interviewed witnesses, and obtained thousands of documents that demonstrated the significant factual inaccuracies in the allegations,” the insurer said previously. “After reviewing all the evidence during its multi-year investigation, the Department of Justice declined to pursue the matter.”
After the Guardian’s first article, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) opened an investigation into UnitedHealth’s nursing home practices and sought company documents about the reported incentive programs. The lawmakers expanded the probe in January after the outlet published a second investigative report in December detailing three cases in which nursing home residents allegedly died after Optum employees delayed or denied hospital transfers.
Those allegations, which stemmed from two wrongful death lawsuits and a complaint to state regulators, were not part of the dismissed Delaware case, which focused only on the findings within the May article. UnitedHealth has pushed back against the claims, calling them unsubstantiated or based on incomplete information, and has denied the families’ allegations in court.
In the defamation case, the court rejected each of UnitedHealth’s claims without prejudice. On allegations that the insurer pressed staff to move patients to “do not resuscitate” status, Judge Scott found the statements were not capable of a defamatory meaning, noting the article framed the pressure as falling on the company’s own nurse practitioners, not as UnitedHealth telling patients to forgo care to save money.
On the “secret” bonuses and the role of UnitedHealth clinicians in patient care, the judge found the reporting “substantially true.” He pointed to UnitedHealth’s own complaint, which acknowledged that the specifics of its nursing home contracts were not publicly disclosed, and found no meaningful difference for a reader between “secretly” and “not publicly disclosed.”
The ruling comes as UnitedHealth’s MA and post-acute care operations face intensifying federal scrutiny. Two June reports from the HHS Office of Inspector General found that UnitedHealthcare, Humana and CVS Health denied requests for long-term acute care, inpatient rehabilitation and skilled nursing at higher rates than peers. Both flagged naviHealth, an Optum-owned utilization management vendor, in post-acute coverage decisions. Earlier this month, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) pressed the three insurers for more information about AI-driven denials.
UnitedHealth is also facing a class action in Minnesota brought by families of deceased MA members who allege an AI tool from naviHealth drove post-acute care denials. Optum has previously said coverage decisions are made by physicians following CMS guidance, not AI.
Becker’s has reached out to UnitedHealth for comment and will update this article if more information becomes available.
The Guardian’s first investigative report is here, and its second report is here.
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