Two months after a cyberattack on a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary halted payments to some doctors, medical providers say they’re still grappling with the fallout, even though UnitedHealth told shareholders on Tuesday that business is largely back to normal. “We are still desperately struggling,” said Emily Benson, a therapist in Edina, Minnesota, who runs her own practice, Beginnings & Beyond. “This was way more devastating than covid ever was.” Change Healthcare, a business unit of the Minnesota-based insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, controls a digital network so vast it processes near ..read more

The Host Mary Agnes Carey KFF Health News @maryagnescarey Read Mary Agnes' stories. Lawmakers in Washington this week held the first congressional hearing on the Change Healthcare cyberattack, a breach that sent shock waves through the health care system as payments for care ground to a halt and left some providers in financial trouble. Republicans and Democrats alike zeroed in on how big health care conglomerations — like Change’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group — are leaving patients vulnerable. And nearly 1 in 4 adults who lost Medicaid coverage in the past year are now uninsured, accor ..read more

A wide-ranging lawsuit filed Friday outlines a moneymaking scheme by which large insurance sales agency call centers enrolled people into Affordable Care Act plans or switched their coverage, all without their permission. According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, two such call centers paid tens of thousands of dollars a day to buy names of people who responded to misleading advertisements touting free government “subsidies” and other rewards. In turn, sales agents used the information to either enroll them in ACA plans or switch their existing ..read more

Casi una cuarta parte de los adultos que fueron dados de baja de Medicaid el año pasado dicen que ahora no tienen seguro, según una encuesta que detalla cómo decenas de millones de estadounidenses lucharon por conservar la cobertura del gobierno para personas de bajos ingresos. Las protecciones que tuvo el programa durante la pandemia, que impedían que se expulsaran beneficiarios, expiraron la primavera pasada. La primera encuesta nacional sobre estas desafiliaciones de Medicaid halló que casi la mitad de las personas que perdieron la cobertura volvieron a inscribirse semanas o meses después ..read more

Tax season is never fun. But some tax filers this year face an added complication: Their returns are being rejected because they failed to provide information about Affordable Care Act coverage they didn’t even know they had. While the concern about unscrupulous brokers enrolling unsuspecting people in ACA coverage has simmered for years, complaints have risen in recent months as consumers discover their health insurance coverage isn’t what they thought it was. Now such unauthorized enrollments are also causing tax headaches. Returns are getting rejected by the IRS and some people will have to ..read more

Nearly a quarter of adults disenrolled from Medicaid in the past year say they are now uninsured, according to a survey released Friday that details how tens of millions of Americans struggled to retain coverage in the government insurance program for low-income people after pandemic-era protections began expiring last spring. The first national survey of adults whose Medicaid eligibility was reviewed during the unwinding found nearly half of people who lost their government coverage signed back up weeks or months later — suggesting they should never have been dropped in the first place. While ..read more

Covering the American health care system means we tell some scary stories. This episode of “An Arm and a Leg” sounds like a real horror movie.  It uses one of Hollywood’s favorite tropes: machines taking over. And the machines belong to the private health insurance company UnitedHealth Group.  Host Dan Weissmann talks to Stat News reporter Bob Herman about his investigation into Medicare Advantage plans that use an algorithm to make decisions about patient care. The algorithm is owned by a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. Herman tells Weissmann that some of UnitedHealth’s own employ ..read more

DENVER.- Un lunes reciente, la pediatra Patricia Braun y su equipo atendieron a unos 100 niños en una clínica comunitaria. Administraron vacunas contra la gripe y trataron infecciones de oído. Pero Braun también hizo algo que la mayoría de los médicos de atención primaria no hacen. Revisó las bocas de los pacientes en busca de caries o cepilló sus dientes con barniz de flúor. “Estamos viendo más enfermedades bucodentales que en el resto de la población. La necesidad es mayor”, dijo Braun sobre los pacientes que trata en el Centro de Salud Familiar Bernard F. Gipson Eastside, que forma parte de ..read more

Until last week, the system that is used to enroll people in federal Affordable Care Act insurance plans inadvertently allowed access by insurance brokers to consumers’ full Social Security numbers, information brokers don’t need. That raised concerns about the potential for misuse. The access to policyholders’ personal information was one of the problems cited in a KFF Health News article describing growing complaints about rogue agents enrolling people in ACA coverage, also known as Obamacare, or switching consumers’ plans without their permission in order to garner the commissions. The cons ..read more

Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names. Many readers responded to our data-driven coverage of how ethical and religious directives issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops affect care options at Catholic and Catholic-affiliated hospitals in the United States. And we encourage other readers to share their feedback. A communications specialist in Seattle stated her opinion bluntly in an X post. "More and more women are running into barriers to obtaining care ..read more