I did some research. Apparently the headline is sensationalizing it quite a bit.
What was really happening was UHC was rewarding nursing homes with incentives when the home reduced the number of hospital referrals for things that didn’t require a hospital visit, and instead took care of them properly. (Thus not shifting the responsibility). That is, not sending grandma to the ER every time she had a cough. This was better for the overwhelmed hospitals, people with real emergencies, and for the nursing home residents who would get appropriate care in-house. Some nursing homes took this to the extreme and wouldn’t send their wards to the hospital for anything at all - resulting in unnecessary deaths, but that’s the nursing home’s fault, not entirely UHC’s.

I mean fuck UHC and health insurance companies in general, but this story is not as cut & dry as implied by the headline.