Office of the
Illinois Attorney General
Kwame Raoul

Chicago – Attorney General Kwame Raoul, with the Department of Justice (DOJ), Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and New York Attorney General Letitia James, filed a proposed settlement today requiring broad divestitures to resolve the challenge to UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s (UnitedHealth) $3.3 billion acquisition of Amedisys Inc. Among those divestitures is an Amedisys home health location in O’Fallon, Illinois. 

“This divestiture will help preserve health care service competition in the area, which is essential to preserving access, quality and affordability in home health care services for the most vulnerable patients,” Raoul said. “This collaboration with the Department of Justice and my fellow attorneys general allows us to ensure a competitive labor market for local nurses and health care professionals and to protect older residents and those managing chronic conditions.” 

The proposed settlement would require UnitedHealth and Amedisys to divest 164 home health and hospice locations, including one affiliated palliative care facility, across 19 states that account for approximately $528 million in annual revenue. The number of facilities involved makes the settlement the largest divestiture of outpatient health care services to resolve a merger challenge. 

In addition to the divestiture, the proposed settlement would: 

• Obligate UnitedHealth to divest eight additional locations if it fails to obtain regulatory approval for the divestiture of associated facilities without the additional locations.
• Impose a monitor to supervise UnitedHealth’s divestiture of the assets and compliance with the consent decree.
• Provide the divestiture buyers with the assets, personnel and relationships to compete against UnitedHealth in the overlapping areas.
• Incorporate robust protections to strengthen adherence to the decree and deter interference with the divestiture buyers’ ability to compete.
• Require Amedisys to pay a $1.1 million civil penalty and train its corporate and field leadership on antitrust compliance for falsely certifying under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 that the company had truthfully, correctly and completely responded to the United States’ requests for documents.                               

As required by the Tunney Act, the proposed settlement, along with a competitive impact statement, will be published in the Federal Register. Any interested person should submit written comments concerning the proposed settlement within 60 days following the publication to Jill Maguire, acting chief, Healthcare and Consumer Products Section, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 450 Fifth Street NW, Suite 4100, Washington, DC 20530. At the conclusion of the public comment period, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland may enter the final judgment upon finding it is in the public interest. 

UnitedHealth is a vertically integrated insurer, health care provider, pharmacy benefit manager, and health care software and services vendor headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. UnitedHealth acquired Amedisys’s home health and hospice rival LHC Group Inc. (LHC) in 2023. Amedisys is a home health and hospice services provider headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Assistant Attorneys General Jennifer Coronel, John Milligan and Richard Schultz are handling the case for Raoul’s Antitrust Bureau.