Hey there. Brittany Trang is a reporter for Stat News. That's a health care news outlet.

In fact, we talked with Brittany's colleague Bob Herman in our last episode and like Bob,

Brittany's been covering the business of health care and for her this story starts with Bob

Flagging a story to their team. He dropped a link in the chat that said like hey guys, I think we should write about this,

question mark, and nobody replied.

This story was about a cyber attack against a company called Change Healthcare.

I was like, that sounds like a startup.

I was like, who cares about some sort of health tech startup. But Bob kept bringing it up.

I finally clicked on the link and I was like, oh no, this is a big deal. This touches most of the American health care system.

Yeah, and it's no joke.

Change health care is what's called a data clearinghouse

and it's a big one.

It's an important part of health care's financial

plumbing. Somebody had gone in and basically hijacked their computer

system and said unless we get $22 million we're not giving it back. So change went offline and a huge chunk of the country's

pharmacists, doctors, therapists, hospitals just stopped getting paid. And change health care stayed offline for weeks and

weeks. And here's this other thing. Change health care, you know, isn't a startup.

It's been around for like 20 years. And in late 2022, change got purchased by another

company. A company that's starting to become a real recurring character on this show. United Health Group.

You might remember, they are the country's biggest insurance company and they've got their

hands in just about every other part of health care in a big way.

For instance, they are the very biggest employer

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