Tag Archive for: problem

United Hack Exposes The Problem With Health Care Monopolies

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In a bid to win reelection, the Biden administration keeps trying to sell the country on all the supposed benefits of Obamacare. Before continuing their sales campaign, they might want to check in with the doctors’ offices struggling to make payroll.

For over a month, the multitrillion-dollar health care sector has had to respond to a hack on a payment processor owned by UnitedHealthGroup, the nation’s largest insurer. Axios reported that hospitals, doctors, medical equipment suppliers, and pharmacies are collectively losing as much as $1 billion a day. The chaos is not only caused in no small part by the industry consolidation sparked by Obamacare, but it may make the problem even worse.

Too Big to Fail Redux?

Ignore for a moment the fact that Change Health Care, the UnitedHealth affiliate whose payment processing operations were attacked, reportedly paid $22 million to the ransomware group behind the hack — which will of course only encourage future efforts to target health care entities in cyberspace. The real issue comes via the size and breadth of the network being hacked.

Consider that Change processes 15 billion medical claims per year — the most by any organization in the country. In raw terms, that amounts to more than 41 million medical claims per day. When a company is processing what amounts to a medical claim for more than 1 in 10 Americans each and every day, that is bound to extend its reach far and wide in the health care system.

And so it has proved. Doctors and hospitals are struggling to manage cash flow without regular payments from insurers, as the system for processing payments remains clogged. Patients and pharmacists alike are struggling; pharmacists cannot process a patient’s insurance to determine the proper co-payment or co-insurance, and some patients are having to pay large sums out of pocket (that is, if they can afford to do so) and hope their insurance reimburses them eventually.

Encouraging More Consolidation

How did we get to this point? Why was the nation’s largest health insurer able to buy such a critically important payment processor? Good question.

For years, Obamacare has encouraged hospitals,…

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The NCSC research problem book – NCSC.GOV.UK – National Cyber Security Centre

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The NCSC research problem book – NCSC.GOV.UK  National Cyber Security Centre

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A security problem has taken down computer systems for almost all Kansas courts

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Computer systems for almost all of Kansas’ courts have been offline for five days because of what officials call a “security incident,” preventing them from accepting electronic filings and blocking public access to many of their records.

Judicial branch officials still don’t know the extent of the problem or how long the computer systems will remain offline, spokesperson Lisa Taylor said Tuesday. The problem, discovered Thursday, meant the systems haven’t been able to accept electronic filings, process payments, manage cases, grant public access to records, allow people to file electronically for protection-from-abuse orders and permit people to apply electronically for marriage licenses.

Divorced parents who are supposed to receive child support from their ex-spouses are likely to see delays in the processing of their payments, the state Department for Children and Families also announced Tuesday.

The problems don’t affect courts in Johnson County in the Kansas City area, the state’s most populous county, because it operates its own computer systems. But state Supreme Court Chief Justice Marla Luckert last week directed the courts in the state’s 104 other counties to accept paper filings and filings by fax or mail, suspending a requirement that attorneys file electronically.

Wisconsin’s court system reported an attack by hackers in March, a cybersecurity threat briefly forced Alaska’s courts offline in 2021, and Texas’ top criminal and civil courts were hit with a ransomware attack in 2020. The International Criminal Court also reported what it called a “cybersecurity incident” in September.

But Taylor said Kansas court officials do not yet know whether its “security incident” was a malicious attack.

“It’s not just one system. It’s multiple systems that are all interconnected,” she said. “We’ve got the electronic filing, which is separate from the case management system, yet they they are connected in some way.”

Because courts have in recent years been keeping only digital copies of many records, those records won’t be accessible to the public with computer systems down, Taylor said.

A joint legislative committee that examines state…

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‘It’s a $20 solution to a $500 problem’ – this viral hack will turn your basic stick vacuum into a high-tech dupe

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When Dyson launched its latest range of cordless vacuums, the internet practically lost its mind at the new Detect feature. If you haven’t seen it, Detect is basically an integrated laser in the head of the vacuum, precisely angled in a way that reveals every last particle of dust and hair on your floor. It’s a genius way to make sure you’re giving your home a deep clean when you vacuum.

It’s a feature we expect to see on all the best cordless vacuums going forward, but for Dyson’s offering, it’s only available on the V15 Detect and V12 Detect Slim Absolute. At $749.99 and $499.99 respectively, it’s a big price tag for the novelty of the laser head feature, especially if you’d recently paid out for an older Dyson vacuum model.

For Aden Wang, a product designer based in San Francisco, the laser functionality was an attractive proposition, but would mean having to upgrade his existing Dyson to the newer $500 model. However, he found a clever product on Amazon that could add the functionality to his existing vacuum.

This $20 vacuum cleaner dust display lamp from Amazon can be fixed onto a range of other vacuums, including a Dyson. It’s mounted with a sticker pad, powered by a battery (although rechargeable options are available), and turned on by a button the device.

It has some other benefits, according to Aden. ‘The Dyson laser clean head may be great for hardwood floors, but it’s inconvenient to change clean head when cleaning between hardwood and carpet. I’d rather sticking with just one clean head,’ he says.

Vacuum cleaner dust display LED lamp

Price: $19.99

Of course, it’s not the perfect solution. Unlike the Dyson Detect, the laser isn’t ever going to be integrated into your vacuum, which has its drawbacks.

‘You have to manually turn it on and off,’ Aden explains on his Instagram Reel, ‘but I found tapping it with my foot works well. It doesn’t connect to the Dyson power source. So you’ll need to change batteries. It sticks out a little bit so it hits the ground first before you drop flat your clean head.’

In spite of these flaws, for $20, it’s the perfect way to embrace this new piece of technology for now, even if you’re going to invest in a Dyson Detect later down the line.

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