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New York Magazine: Corporate Greed Made the Change Healthcare Cyberattack Worse
Hackers have made it impossible for millions of patients to refill prescriptions or even schedule procedures by striking at a single company.
When news of the cyberattack began to trickle out, UnitedHealth Group — the health-care behemoth that owns Change through yet another subsidiary, Optum — claimed the culprit was associated with a “nation-state,” though it turned out to be the ransomware gang BlackCat, which appears to have stolen data about patients, encrypted it, then demanded payment for its safe return. While Change is little-known outside of the industry, its status as a dominant hub for insurance approvals and reimbursements made it a ripe target, guaranteeing that a single attack could threaten not only the well-being of patients, but the financial solvency of health-care providers across the country. Change was important to the daily operations of the U.S. health-care system before UnitedHealth bought it, but the merger turned it into critical infrastructure — providing a target that, if hit correctly, could simultaneously postpone a surgery in Milwaukee, delay a teenager’s prescription refill in New York, and choke the revenue stream of an oncology practice in Albuquerque.
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