LETTER | Congress must hold health insurance giants accountable
On May 1, over two months since Change Healthcare was hacked leading to significant access and billing issues across the country, the CEO of Change Healthcare’s parent company UnitedHealth Group (UHG), testified before a Senate Committee about the incident. I was pleased to see members of Congress take this opportunity to question Mr. Witty about not only the Change Healthcare cyber-attack, but also challenge him on the exploitative nature of his company’s pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), OptumRx. While the testimony left much to be desired, it was refreshing to see our elected officials challenge Mr. Witty on his companies’ exploitive practices.
This cyberattack has highlighted the damaging role of vertical integration in our healthcare system. It is essential we have better safeguards to ensure patients don’t suffer due to the negligence of companies, like the mega-insurer UnitedHealth Group, which processes 15 billion transactions a year and touches one in every three patient records.
Change Healthcare is big, but UnitedHealth Group is even bigger. In fact, it was UHG’s Optum unit that bought Change Healthcare for $13 billion in 2022. Following the acquisition Optum said in a statement to Forbes, it would “connect and simplify the core clinical, administrative, and payment processes health care providers and payers depend on to serve patients.” Right now, it looks like connecting and simplifying this much of the healthcare system made it all too easy for cyber criminals to breach and easier for this PBM to profit off of patients.
In fact, UnitedHealth admitted recently that a “substantial proportion” of Americans may have had their personal medical data compromised in this attack. Congress must continue to challenge Mr. Witty and work to hold UnitedHealth Group accountable for this breakdown in security and further investigate the business practices of PBMs like OptumRx.
Phyllis Arends
Empire Mental Health Support
In my opinion, looking back, the best and most protected and most secure and most complete medical record was the "paper" medical chart containing written and dictated documents of a patient's medical care. Copies of reports were mailed to referring physicians and vice-versa. The patients had easy access to the charts. The Medical Records staff were always there if any questions. I found it incredibly easier and faster to review a patient's medical history from such charts. What has been lost for gains in billing and other exploitative entrepreneurial add-ons describes the general condition of healthcare today...
I do not know what or who Empire Mental Health Support is or why they are writing this letter. Maybe knowing more about that would help me understand it better.
The author stated: "Right now, it looks like connecting and simplifying this much of the healthcare system made it all too easy for cyber criminals to breach and easier for this PBM to profit off of patients."
My reaction to that statement is that "Right now" it appears to be a rank speculation based on unproven assumptions and a huge unwarranted jump to a conclusion. It was not necessary to make a groundless accusation about fault in the Health carriers IT system in order to make the common sense statement that there should be an investigation as to whether there was such fault. Hacks even occur with the US government. In this electronic age, because we all choose to expose what we have a right to keep private, there are going to be hacks. It is not just a possibility. It is a certainty. The criminals of today are highly technically skilled and intelligent; far more so than at any time in human history. Blaming the corporations' practices might end up being warranted, but "right now" it is premature to villainize Changed Healthcare, UnitedHealth group, or Optum RX. I am one of the last people to assert moral integrity on the part of an insurer, but still, we must be fair.