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Change Healthcare Hack

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Posted 3/15/2024 12:21 AM (GMT 0)
How many of you have been affected by the Change Healthcare hack?

Apparently there was a ransomware attack on 2/21 and that company is still down.

It assists with insurance transactions throughout the usa. So drs and pharmacies cannot submit claims if they use that system.

The hackers have also stolen terabytes of very personal data.
Posted 3/15/2024 10:56 AM (GMT 0)
We are not personally affected. Reuters reports the Pharmacy network is back online. It looks like they are owned by United Health Care and McKesson. Both appear to be taking a lot of investor and regulatory criticism.
Posted 3/15/2024 11:41 AM (GMT 0)
This morning McDonalds is under attack. That could be good for one’s health.
Posted 3/15/2024 3:04 PM (GMT 0)
Being in MN where United is headquartered, we have seen more press on this than most and were actually affected by the disruption. My wife had some new prescriptions sent in Thurs afternoon, 2/22/23. She finally called to check as nothing showed on her web account, they had received 2 of 3 prescription so we had to get the 3rd one resent a couple of times.

They told me, when picking up the meds, there were multiple issues from the doctors getting the prescriptions to them and the inability to confirm coverage with the United "Change Healthcare" company that handles that clearing house function. Getting paid for the transactions was another issue after that. The staff looked pretty frazzled and this was the first day of the mess. Looked like they were doing part computer and part manual processing of prescriptions. I felt bad bothering them but my wife had an infection and the meds were more important than normal.

Good example of the "too big to fail" problem. United Healthcare is the largest company in MN now by far (think 3M, Target, etc) and a dominant player in US. The fact that they control the largest drug clearing house as well puts them in the category of Amazon, Google, etc except that this is health care, which is a little worse than if our delivery is delayed due to weather. Let the fireworks begin in government. (I think TriCare was affected as well?)
Posted 3/15/2024 3:48 PM (GMT 0)
From the Change Healthcare website.

They're supplying a good bit of information on the situation, and what's being done about it now:

https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/ns/changehealthcare.html
Posted 3/15/2024 3:54 PM (GMT 0)
We don't really need to be so concerned about AI wrecking everything. The hackers will probably get there first. Only just about EveryThing is totally dependent on the computer infrastructure. I don't really know enough about it, but it seems like we've left ourselves wide open for a lot of trouble.

Alright, have a good weekend everybody.
Posted 3/15/2024 4:44 PM (GMT 0)
I took another look at the text in the link in my above post, and noticed that the last sentence in it reads

"This incident serves as yet another reminder of the interconnectedness of our health care ecosystem and of the urgency of strengthening cybersecurity resiliency across the industry."

Yeah.
Posted 3/16/2024 7:10 AM (GMT 0)
I couldn't get a Covid booster at RiteAid due to problems with Medicare billing. This crap's
getting old!
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