UnitedHealth skips hearing in the wake of Change cyberattack, triggering call for subpoena

In the first federal hearing focused on the massive cyberattack on Change Healthcare, lawmakers had many important questions for UnitedHealth, which owns Change: Did it meet Health and Human Services’ cybersecurity performance goals? Has UnitedHealth exploited physicians’ cash shortfalls caused by the Change outage to acquire struggling practices? Did UnitedHealth indeed pay the purported $22 million ransom?

The lawmakers had to be content with witnesses’ shrugs and side-step answers, because UnitedHealth didn’t send a representative to the healthcare cybersecurity hearing.

Multiple representatives, including House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-Wash.) and ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), expressed their disappointment that UnitedHealth failed to make anyone available to testify about the cyberattack on its subsidary.

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