NY to pursue health insurers on out-of-network rates

NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) - New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday vowed to aggressively pursue health insurers that relied on UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N) to help set how much they reimburse patients for out-of-network care.

Cuomo said UnitedHealth Group had agreed to spend $50 million to set up a new database to determine market rates for medical care after it was charged with operating, via its Ingenix unit, a "defective and manipulative" database that overstated reimbursement rates.

"I'm going to put all insurance companies on notice today...I believe all the companies involved with Ingenix were involved in consumer fraud," Cuomo told a news conference.

The names of companies he listed included: Aetna Inc (AET.N), Cigna Corp (CI.N), and WellPoint (WLP.N).

(Reporting by Joan Gralla in New York, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)