Earlier this week, a second ransomware group came after Nashville-based clearing house Change Healthcare, according to Becker’s Hospital Review. Hackers known as Ransom Hub claim to possess Change data and are asking for payment, or else they would sell the information on the dark web.
Change confirmed to Becker’s that it was “aware of the reports.”
In a bid to win reelection, the Biden administration keeps trying to sell the country on all the supposed benefits of Obamacare. Before continuing their sales campaign, they might want to check in with the doctors’ offices struggling to make payroll.
For over a month, the multitrillion-dollar health care sector has had to respond to a hack on a payment processor owned by UnitedHealthGroup, the nation’s largest insurer. Axios reported that hospitals, doctors, medical equipment suppliers, and pharmacies are collectively losing as much as $1 billion a day. The chaos is not only caused in no small part by the industry consolidation sparked by Obamacare, but it may make the problem even worse.
Ignore for a moment the fact that Change Health Care, the UnitedHealth affiliate whose payment processing operations were attacked, reportedly paid $22 million to the ransomware group behind the hack — which will of course only encourage future efforts to target health care entities in cyberspace. The real issue comes via the size and breadth of the network being hacked.
Consider that Change processes 15 billion medical claims per year — the most by any organization in the country. In raw terms, that amounts to more than 41 million medical claims per day. When a company is processing what amounts to a medical claim for more than 1 in 10 Americans each and every day, that is bound to extend its reach far and wide in the health care system.
And so it has proved. Doctors and hospitals are struggling to manage cash flow without regular payments from insurers, as the system for processing payments remains clogged. Patients and pharmacists alike are struggling; pharmacists cannot process a patient’s insurance to determine the proper co-payment or co-insurance, and some patients are having to pay large sums out of pocket (that is, if they can afford to do so) and hope their insurance reimburses them eventually.
How did we get to this point? Why was the nation’s largest health insurer able to buy such a critically important payment processor? Good question.
For years, Obamacare has encouraged hospitals,…
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pages from the United Healthcare website are displayed on a computer screen, on Feb. 29, in New York. Federal civil rights investigators are looking into whether protected health information was exposed in a recent cyberattack against Change Healthcare, a massive U.S. health care technology company owned by UnitedHealth Group.
Federal civil rights investigators are looking into whether protected health information was exposed in the recent cyberattack on Change Healthcare.
The Office for Civil Rights said today that it also will examine whether Change Healthcare followed laws protecting patient privacy.
Change Healthcare provides technology used to submit and process insurance claims — and handles about 14 billion transactions a year.
The investigation was spurred by the “unprecedented magnitude” of the attack, Office for Civil Rights Director Melanie Fontes Rainer said in a letter.
The Office for Civil Rights, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, enforces federal rules that establish privacy and security requirements for patient health information.
UnitedHealth Group, which owns Change Healthcare, said it would cooperate. Spokesman Eric Hausman added that UnitedHealth Group is working with law enforcement to investigate the extent of the attack.
Attackers gained access to some of Change Healthcare’s information technology systems last month, disrupting billing and care-authorization systems across the country.
The American Hospital Association said recently that some patients have seen delays in getting prescriptions, and hospitals have had issues processing claims, billing patients and checking insurance coverage.
Change Healthcare said today that all of its major pharmacy and payment systems were back online. Last week, the company said it expects to start reestablishing connections to…
