UnitedHealth is now asking doctors to repay the loans it gave out following major hack

Date:
Mon, 14 Apr 2025 20:28:00 +0000

Description:
The company issued temporary funding following huge cyberattack, but now
wants to recoup costs.

FULL STORY

UnitedHealth Group is aggressively going after small healthcare organizations that borrowed money following a huge cyberattack on its subsidy Change Healthcare.

The attack is said to have affected almost 190 million Americans , and was
the largest US healthcare data breach ever, and was incredibly disruptive,
with systems only fully restored 9 months later, costing over $2 billion to recover from.

After the attack, interest-free loans were offered by Change to help medical practices with short-term cash flow needs. The firm is now demanding these funds be immediately repaid, with some organizations asked to repay hundreds
of thousands of dollars in just a few days.

Lost revenue

Optum, UnitedHealths financial arm, has now confirmed it will withhold
separate funds until these loans are repaid.

Doctors with their own private practices used these loans to cover losses
from the disruption following the cyber incident, which cost some hundreds of thousands - and some reportedly used personal savings to keep practices
afloat.

Its worth noting UnitedHealth has a net worth of over $470 billion (at the
time of writing), and CEO Andrew Witty made over $23 million in compensation
in 2023.

Optum has collected over $4.5 billion of the $9 billion debt, but since many practices lost so much in downtime thanks to the disruption, many will
struggle to repay the money owed in the just 5 day timeframe Optum have imposed, with one doctor describing it as a shakedown.

UnitedHealth paid the ransomware attackers $22 million in cryptocurrency to recover its data - but the operation was still shut down in its entirety, and Change never got its data back. Medical data is, of course, extremely sensitive, and put anyone exposed at risk of identity theft or fraud.

Via CNBC

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/unitedhealth-is-now-asking-doctors-to-r epay-the-loans-it-gave-out-following-major-hack

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