Hospitals, doctors and pharmacies are losing up to $1billion per day following a cyber attack on one of America’s largest health insurers.
Last month, the cyber gang BlackCat hacked Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of United Healthcare, which processes a reported 15 billion medical and pharmaceutical claims totaling more than $1.5 trillion a year.
It primarily affected the company’s mail order pharmacy service Optum and disrupted its computer networks. With networks down, insurance payments for prescription drugs could not be processed, leaving many hospitals and doctors responsible for the bills upfront, with hopes they will eventually get reimbursed.
And because pharmacies cannot process the payments, desperate Americans have been forced to hand over potentially thousands of dollars for medications that would normally be covered by insurance and cost far less or ration their current supply.
Olivia Coltrane, a native of the Seattle area, said her regular prescription of generic Vyvance to treat her ADHD normally costs about $3, but she had to pay $92 for her most recently, a mark up of nearly 3,000 percent.
Ms Coltrane has previously detailed to DailyMail.com that she needed to contact her doctor and pharmacy four times before she was able to get the medication – and even she did, she only received a two week supply.
Afraid she is going to run out and not be able to refill it, she told DailyMail.com: ‘All I can do is hope that they’ll have it in stock.’
The number of cyberattacks on healthcare providers has more than doubled since 2016 – with 91 per year in 2021 compared to 43 five years ago
Roughly half of America’s health systems rely on Change Healthcare, and experts estimate the hack is making a huge dent finances.
Max Reale, an analyst at the investment bank Compass Point, said providers could be losing between $500million and $1billion in daily revenue.
Additionally, Chip Kahn, CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, told Axios: ‘I know some systems that bill $40 or $50 million a day. They’re up to about $800 million so far.’
Meanwhile in Arizona, Margaret Brown, 50, struggled for weeks to secure her son’s insulin for his type 1 diabetes.
She called in a refill at the end of February, and was told by a pharmacist that a recent breach had disrupted their ability to fill scripts and bill insurance.
She called in a refill at the end of February, and was told by a pharmacist that a recent breach had disrupted their ability to fill scripts and bill insurance.
Typically, Ms Brown spends zero dollars for a month’s worth of insulin, but she would have had to pay $400 this time.
She told DailyMail.com that, because he still had a bit of insulin left, she waited a bit to call the pharmacy back to see if her claim had been processed.
She said: ‘I went to the pharmacy and asked them again. And they never called me or anything. I just happened to go there and they said it was ready and that it went through.
‘So he didn’t go without but if he was gonna go without, I would have had to pay the $400.’
The hack on February 21 forced Change Healthcare to disconnect all of its systems to mitigate the risk of an even greater attack.
But that move led to the suspension of more than 100 services.
Under normal conditions, hospitals and doctors submit claims to insurance to cover some or all of their patients’ care.
But with the system in its current state, they can’t do that, which hurts their bottom line and, ultimately, the quality of care they can deliver.
The impact of the hack by the group is so severe the federal government announced on Saturday it will distribute emergency funds to providers to alleviate financial issues they may be facing.
Change Healthcare also launched a temporary funding program for providers struggling with cashflow after the cyberattack.
It requires the funds to be repaid and gave no indication of when the normal billing process would resume.
Optum financial services, through which the program is offered, said: ‘We have been able to estimate your average weekly payments, which will be the basis for the support.
‘Our plan is to take this week by week with people re-upping for funding each week as needs persist.’
UnitedHealth Group, for its part, has not offered a prospective date by which the issues will be resolved.
