UPDATE
Apr 24, 2024 3:03 PM CDT
Hackers stole health and personal data from what could amount to a "substantial proportion" of Americans, UnitedHealth said in a Monday update on the February cyberattack on its Change Healthcare subsidiary. UnitedHealth also confirmed that it paid a ransom "as part of the company's commitment to do all it could to protect patient data from disclosure." No specifics on what was paid were given, reports Quartz. Whether you are an impacted American won't be known for some time, though: "It is likely to take several months of continued analysis before enough information will be available to identify and notify impacted customers and individuals," UnitedHealth noted.
Mar 4, 2024 11:00 AM CST
Across the US, health care providers are contending with a payment issue wrought by a ransomware strike that went down last month. The Washington Post reports that, for more than a week, those providers, including hospitals and pharmacies, have had trouble processing insurance claims and filling prescriptions due to the attack on Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth. The Post notes that the outage has left the drug market "in disarray," with some patients made to choose between paying steeper out-of-pocket costs (sometimes to the tune of thousands of dollars) or not getting their meds at all. In some cases, pharmacists have been trying to estimate drug co-pay costs under insurance, hoping that when the system is back up all will be settled.