UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

Fortune

UnitedHealth, employer of slain exec Brian Thompson, found to have overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000% | Fortune

The report is the latest indictment of America’s broken healthcare system.

UnitedHealth Group is charging patients a markup for key life-saving drugs that could easily exceed their cost by a factor of ten or more, according to findings from the Federal Trade Commission. The report, which levels the same allegations at CVS and Cigna, is the latest indictment of America’s broken healthcare system and comes on the heels of last month’s shocking murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The U.S. is notorious for incurring the highest costs per capita of any wealthy nation, yet failing to achieve an even remotely equivalent improvement in patient outcomes versus Europe’s social market-based economies. Critics argue that is due largely to the highly opaque manner in which needless markups are hidden to conceal inefficiencies that serve various vested interests. These include, but are not limited to, the big three drug middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). According to the FTC report, UnitedHealth’s OptumRx, along with Cigna’s Express Scripts and CVS Caremark Rx, were able to collectively pocket $7.3 billion in added revenue above cost during the five year period of the study through 2022. “The Big 3 PBMs marked up numerous specialty generic drugs dispensed at their affiliated pharmacies by thousands of percent, and many others by hundreds of percent,” it concluded. A thousand percent increase in the price of a drug that costs $10 wholesale would result in a retail price of $110. This markup rate applied to 22% of the specialty therapies examined, including Imatinib, a generic used to treat leukemia, or non-oncological Tadalafil for pulmonary hypertension. Others such as Lamivudine needed by HIV-positive patients were nearly quadruple the price of their acquisition cost. Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has been conducting Congressional hearings in an attempt to shed light on the problems posed by these drug middlemen as well as drugmakers themselves. originally posted at

Stacker News

UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000% \ stacker news

UnitedHealth Group is charging patients a markup for key life-saving drugs that could easily exceed their cost by a factor of ten or more, accordin...

1Crossword: crosswords for your password manager

eieio.games

1Crossword: crosswords for your password manager · eieio.games

Password managers have been boring for too long. 1Crossword fixes this.

I still can't tell if this is satire. > I made a game. It’s called 1Crossword. It generates crosswords using the passwords in your 1Password vault. The crosswords are fun, simple, and perfect for sharing on social media once you complete them. originally posted at

Stacker News

1Crossword: crosswords for your password manager \ stacker news

I still can't tell if this is satire. I made a game. It’s called 1Crossword. It generates crosswords using the passwords in your 1Password vault....

Don’t Use Session (Signal Fork)

Don’t Use Session (Signal Fork) - Dhole Moments

Last year, I outlined the specific requirements that an app needs to have in order for me to consider it a Signal competitor. Afterwards, I had sev...

Last year, I outlined the specific requirements that an app needs to have in order for me to consider it a Signal competitor. Afterwards, I had several people ask me what I think of a Signal fork called Session. My answer then is the same thing I’ll say today: Don’t use Session. The main reason I said to avoid Session, all those months ago, was simply due to their decision to remove forward secrecy (which is an important security property of cryptographic protocols they inherited for free when they forked libsignal). Lack of forward secrecy puts you in the scope of Key Compromise Impersonation (KCI) attacks, which serious end-to-end encryption apps should prevent if they want to sit at the adults table. This is why I don’t recommend Tox. And that observation alone should have been enough for anyone to run, screaming, in the other direction from Session. After all, removing important security properties from a cryptographic security protocol is exactly the sort of thing a malicious government would do (especially if the cover story for such a change involves the introduction of swarms and “onion routing”–which computer criminals might think sounds attractive due to their familiarity with the Tor network). Unfortunately, some people love to dig their heels in about messaging apps. So let’s take a closer look at Session.  originally posted at

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deleted by author \ stacker news

deleted by author [4 comments]

@Nunya Bidness not sure if y’all these are on the Circle B View quoted note →