Dear Cybercriminals,
I understand your ransomware schemes have brought in, globally, around 1.1 billion dollars…
By the way, thank you for reading The Frontier Psychiatrists. This is a satire/real health-themed publication. Try to keep up. Yes, that is a lot of money to me. It is a lot of money for most people. Here is the thing about the UnitedHealth Group….they make more money the longer this goes on, not less. If you’d like to know how I’m covering the story, you can read this article. Or this one. Or this one.
I know, I know. It’s counterintuitive. Let me explain:
Change Healthcare is part of Optum, part of UnitedHealth Group. The Department of Justice, back in the 90s, made it clear to UHG that they could no longer acquire more health insurance businesses without running afoul of health insurance antitrust rules. To keep growing, they would have to get into other lines of work. They needed to start growing by “vertical integration”—they built “Optum.” This is the wholly owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group that gets paid by Health Insurance Companies. Yes, UnitedHealth is a health insurance company. Others also pay Optum for its services. You got that right, UnitedHealth pays itself.
How much? Great Question. Lets’ ask
:I’ll do the thing I do for research papers…that has proved popular.
What's the other line there? Do you know what, I'm not getting paid by insurance right now, so I'm gonna put a paywall in to help make my ends meet also. Yes, I know, cyber criminals, you are expecting things for free. Tough 💩 .
So how much is United paying itself?
Well, in a budget item that I've learned to love, corporate and eliminations, you will notice they just X out the amount of money they pay themselves! So the total revenues line gets a little adjustment, for money they took out of one pocket, and put back into another.
United healthcare will survive if United healthcare has a delay in paying United healthcare. But…here's the magical thing!
United healthcare has to pay other companies actual money. Meanwhile, nothing in the change healthcare cyber attack interrupts the flow of premiums into the United healthcare coffers!
So let's revisit that earning statement again…
Every day that BlackCat holds United Healthcare’s ability to pay out claims hostage, United Healthcare, which is legally also a bank, is earning interest on $730m…every day.
Our hapless ransomware cyber hackers made the bold choice to hold hostage a company's ability to pay money, not to make money. They make more money every single day they can't pay out claims, because they're just earning interest on the money in the legal bank that they also own as part of their domain.
I implore you, Ransomware cyber criminals, if you want a victim to pay your ransom, probably make sure that your cyber attack doesn't make them endlessly more money if they slow-roll you. Their incentive is not to get this over with quickly. You're in the big leagues now, UHC is gonna crush you like they do all the rest of us.
But if you need a loan, they know a lender. All we're gonna have to have you do a set up your Optum Pay account first….