Next week, Senate Finance Committee members will grill UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty for the lax security that enabled a cyberattack on UnitedHealth’s claims-processing subsidiary, Change Healthcare. The attack shut down payments across the healthcare industry for weeks, creating a $14 billion backlog in claims and sending providers on a frustrating search for workarounds.
Much of the April 30 hearing will focus on the specifics of the cyberattack and its aftermath. But lawmakers should think bigger — and probe the staggering influence of UnitedHealth, which has quietly metastasized into one of the nation’s largest and most politically powerful firms, one that all too often grows its bottom line at the expense of patients’ health and privacy.