Kang and Associates Lawsuit: UnitedHealthcare and GEICO Cases

The Kang and Associates lawsuit most often referred to online is a 2020 federal case in which Florida Emergency Physicians Kang & Associates, M.D., Inc. (FEP Kang) sued UnitedHealthcare and MultiPlan, Inc. over out-of-network emergency reimbursement rates. The practice has also been a party to an older wrongful death appeal, a Florida personal injury protection dispute with GEICO, and a steady stream of consumer complaints over billing and collections.

Who FEP Kang Is Today

FEP Kang was once the largest independent emergency medicine physician group in Florida, staffing eleven facilities in the Florida Hospital (now AdventHealth) system with roughly 150 physicians and 100 advanced practice clinicians. On October 1, 2016, it was acquired by TeamHealth Holdings Inc.¹ That same month, TeamHealth agreed to be acquired by the private equity firm Blackstone in a deal valued at approximately $6.1 billion.² FEP Kang now operates under the TeamHealth umbrella and remains an active multi-specialty group with a primary practice address in Orlando.³

The 2020 Lawsuit Against UnitedHealthcare and MultiPlan

On April 13, 2020, FEP Kang filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida: Florida Emergency Physicians Kang & Associates, M.D., Inc., et al. v. United Healthcare of Florida, Inc., et al., Case No. 20-60757-CIV-DIMITROULEAS.⁴

Who Sued Whom

FEP Kang was joined by six affiliated emergency medicine entities: InPhynet Contracting Services, LLC; InPhynet South Broward, LLC; Paragon Contracting Services, LLC; Paragon Emergency Services, LLC; Southwest Florida Emergency Management, LLC; and Emergency Services of Zephyrhills, P.A.⁴ The defendants were United Healthcare of Florida, Inc. (the HMO arm), UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co. (the PPO arm), UMR, Inc. (a third-party administrator), and MultiPlan, Inc.⁵

What the Providers Alleged

All the plaintiffs were out-of-network emergency providers. They alleged that United and MultiPlan ran a coordinated scheme to suppress reimbursement, built around MultiPlan’s “Data iSight” repricing tool. United, they said, directed MultiPlan to generate payment recommendations through Data iSight and then presented those amounts to providers as objective, market-based figures adjusted for geographic cost differences.⁶

The complaint argued that this was misleading. MultiPlan, the providers said, was financially incentivized to produce the lowest numbers it could, and its claims of using millions of paid claims, standard relative value units, and geographic adjustments were false. Reimbursement rates for claims from different regions showed no meaningful variation, which the plaintiffs said undermined the stated methodology.⁵ When providers called the toll-free number on their Explanation of Benefit forms to challenge underpayments, Data iSight could not explain how its figures were calculated, yet the rates were then increased anyway.⁶

Under Sections 641.513(5) and 627.64194 of the Florida Statutes, the plaintiffs argued, United was required to reimburse out-of-network emergency providers at their billed charges or the usual and customary rate.⁶

The Nine Counts

The amended complaint raised nine counts:

Counts I and II, violations of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), alleging a pattern of fraud carried out through interstate wire and mail communications.
Count III, a violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, directed at MultiPlan.
Counts IV and V, violations of the two Florida statutes governing out-of-network emergency reimbursement, directed at the United HMO and PPO entities respectively.
Counts VI through VIII, common-law claims for breach of implied-in-fact contract, quantum meruit, and unjust enrichment against United.
Count IX, a request for declaratory judgment establishing the specific payment rates required under Florida law.

The plaintiffs sought treble damages and a mandatory injunction requiring United to pay the legally required rates going forward.⁵

How the Case Ended

On March 16, 2021, Judge William P. Dimitrouleas issued an omnibus order on the defendants’ motions to dismiss. The court dismissed the two RICO counts, finding that the plaintiffs had not plausibly alleged that the defendants’ fraudulent misrepresentations were the proximate cause of the providers’ financial injury. The complaint itself showed the providers had challenged the rates rather than relied on Data iSight’s representations, which undercut the causal link a RICO fraud claim requires.⁵

On two other contested legal questions the court sided with the providers. It rejected United’s argument that the McCarran-Ferguson Act reverse-preempted the federal RICO claims, and it rejected the argument that ERISA preempted the state-law claims, finding that the Florida statutes and common-law theories operated independently of ERISA benefit plans.⁵ The RICO dismissal came with leave to amend.

The case terminated on April 12, 2021, about a month after the omnibus order.⁴ The available docket records do not specify whether the case ended through a further dismissal, a settlement, or a voluntary withdrawal.

Where the Case Fits in a Larger Fight

The FEP Kang suit was one of many actions by emergency physician groups challenging insurer reimbursement, and by MultiPlan customers challenging its repricing tools. A TeamHealth spokesperson has said the company’s settlement recoveries from United Healthcare have reached approximately $500 million across multiple suits.⁷ Specific outcomes include a 2021 Nevada jury verdict of roughly $60 million in punitive damages against United Healthcare, and a March 2026 Florida arbitration award of $11.3 million to a TeamHealth clinician group. Not every case has gone TeamHealth’s way; a jury ruled for United at an April 2024 trial involving four TeamHealth subsidiaries.⁸

MultiPlan itself faces consolidated federal litigation in In re MultiPlan Health Insurance Provider Litigation (MDL 3121, N.D. Ill.). In 2025 the court ruled the providers had standing to pursue financial compensation, and a bellwether trial is scheduled for December 2027.⁶ The American Medical Association and the Illinois State Medical Society filed their own complaint against MultiPlan in October 2024, calling Data iSight “little more than a technological smokescreen for traditional price-fixing.”⁹

The Parker Wrongful Death Appeal

Long before the reimbursement fight, FEP Kang was the defendant in a wrongful death case. In Florida Emergency Physicians-Kang and Associates, M.D., P.A. v. Parker, 800 So. 2d 631 (Fla. 5th DCA 2001), H. Clay Parker sued as personal representative of the estate of Gabriel David Anderson, a 24-year-old who died from a ruptured brain aneurysm in 1998. The suit alleged that two emergency room physicians employed by FEP, Angela Garcia, M.D. and Kahang Chan, M.D., failed to stabilize and admit Anderson for neurosurgical evaluation.¹⁰

An Orange County jury found FEP and its physicians 75% liable and a non-party doctor 25% liable, awarding $3 million per child to Anderson’s three minor children, for a total of $9 million. After the liability split, each child’s award was reduced to $2,225,000.¹⁰

On appeal, the Fifth District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment as to two of the three children, holding that the trial court had wrongly refused to compel psychological examinations of the two youngest, whose emotional loss was squarely at issue. The appellate court affirmed on the other two issues, keeping out evidence that Anderson had been an irregular child-support payer and that the children’s mother had remarried, and it left the oldest child’s $3 million award intact because FEP had never formally requested an examination for her. The case was remanded for a new trial on damages for the two younger children.¹⁰ The two younger children ultimately received a combined $1.5 million; the oldest child retained the full $3 million.¹¹

The GEICO PIP Deductible Case

FEP Kang was also the plaintiff in a Florida personal injury protection dispute. In Florida Emergency Physicians Kang & Assoc., M.D., P.A., a/a/o Oswaldo Pedroza v. Geico General Insurance Company (Case No. 2011-SC-6994-O, decided April 2, 2014), a Florida circuit court addressed whether an insurer could apply an emergency provider’s bill toward the insured’s elected deductible instead of paying it from the $5,000 statutory reserve set aside for emergency services under Florida Statute Section 627.736(4)(c).¹²

The Kang ruling supported the principle that when both emergency (“priority”) and non-emergency (“non-priority”) bills are submitted on the same PIP claim, the insurer must apply the deductible to the non-priority bills first, preserving the statutory reserve for emergency providers. The Fifth District Court of Appeal later reached a different conclusion in a related Mercury Insurance dispute, holding in 2015 that the statutory reserve does not exempt emergency bills from a contractually selected deductible.¹³

Consumer Complaints About Billing and Collections

Outside the courts, FEP Kang has drawn steady consumer complaints about how patients are billed. As of mid-2026, the Better Business Bureau profile for Florida Emergency Physicians (based in Maitland, Florida) shows 104 complaints over the preceding three years, with 45 in the most recent twelve months. Billing disputes account for 62 of those complaints.¹⁴

Recurring grievances include patients saying their accounts were sent to collections without prior bills or an opportunity to dispute the charges. Several consumers reported that debts were pursued even after the treating hospital had approved them for charity care or financial assistance. Others alleged that medical debts were reported to credit bureaus without proper validation, citing protections under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the No Surprises Act.¹⁴

FEP and its billing agent, Alcoa Billing Center, have generally responded by requesting patient-identifying information to locate accounts. Where consumers provided proof of charity care approval, the company agreed to close collections accounts and request removal of the debt from credit reports.¹⁴ If you believe you were billed for an emergency visit that should have been covered or approved for financial assistance, the No Surprises Act and Fair Credit Reporting Act are the two federal frameworks patients have most often invoked in these disputes.

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