When Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, got hit by a cyberattack this winter, a big chunk of the nation’s doctors, pharmacists, hospitals, and therapists stopped getting paid. The hack also limited health providers’ ability to share medical records and other information critical to patient care.
The cyberattack revealed an often overlooked part of how health care is paid for in the United States and raised concerns for antitrust advocates about how large UnitedHealth has grown.
Host Dan Weissmann speaks with reporters Brittany Trang of Stat News and Maureen Tkacik of The American Prospect about their reporting on the hack and what it says about antitrust enforcement of health care companies.
Click to open the Transcript
Transcript: The Hack
Note: “An Arm and a Leg” uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
Dan: Hey there.
Brittany Trang is a reporter at STAT News– that’s a health care news outlet. We talked with Brittany’s colleague Bob Herman in our last episode. Like Bob, she’s been covering the business of health care.
And for Brittany, this story starts with Bob flagging a story to their team. He…
Brittany Trang: Dropped a link in the chat that said like, hey guys, I think we should write about this, question mark, and nobody replied,
Dan: The story was about a cyber-attack against a company called Change Healthcare.
Brittany Trang: I was like that sounds like a startup and I was like who cares about some sort of health tech startup
Dan: But Bob kept bringing it up.
Brittany Trang: And I finally clicked on the link, and I was like, oh no, this is a big deal. This touches most of the American healthcare system.
Dan: Yeah, and it’s no joke. Change Healthcare is what’s called a data clearinghouse. And it’s a big one. It’s an important part of health care’s financial plumbing. Someone had gone in and basical …
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When Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, got hit by a cyberattack this winter, a big chunk of the nation’s doctors, pharmacists, hospitals, and therapists stopped getting paid. The hack also limited health providers’ ability to share medical records and other information critical to patient care.
The cyberattack revealed an often overlooked part of how health care is paid for in the United States and raised concerns for antitrust advocates about how large UnitedHealth has grown.
Host Dan Weissmann speaks with reporters Brittany Trang of Stat News and Maureen Tkacik of The American Prospect about their reporting on the hack and what it says about antitrust enforcement of health care companies.
Click to open the Transcript
Transcript: The Hack
Note: “An Arm and a Leg” uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
Dan: Hey there.
Brittany Trang is a reporter at STAT News– that’s a health care news outlet. We talked with Brittany’s colleague Bob Herman in our last episode. Like Bob, she’s been covering the business of health care.
And for Brittany, this story starts with Bob flagging a story to their team. He…
Brittany Trang: Dropped a link in the chat that said like, hey guys, I think we should write about this, question mark, and nobody replied,
Dan: The story was about a cyber-attack against a company called Change Healthcare.
Brittany Trang: I was like that sounds like a startup and I was like who cares about some sort of health tech startup
Dan: But Bob kept bringing it up.
Brittany Trang: And I finally clicked on the link, and I was like, oh no, this is a big deal. This touches most of the American healthcare system.
Dan: Yeah, and it’s no joke. Change Healthcare is what’s called a data clearinghouse. And it’s a big one. It’s an important part of health care’s financial plumbing. Someone had gone in and basical …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]