Chair Rodgers Joins CNBC’s Squawk Box to Discuss E&C Hearing on Change Healthcare Cyberattack

May 01, 2024

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) joined CNBC's Squawk Box to talk about today's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on the Change Healthcare cyberattack. Highlights and excerpts from the interview below:

On What to Expect at This Afternoon's Hearing:

"This is an important Oversight Subcommittee hearing for the Energy and Commerce Committee. We expect to get a comprehensive report from Mr. Witty from UnitedHealth as to what happened, why Americans have had their personal health information made available on the dark web, what they're doing to fix this problem, and then also what we and what UnitedHealth must do to ensure that this never happens again.

"UnitedHealth is very large, and millions of families and taxpayers pay billions of dollars to UnitedHealth in premiums, and we need to make sure that their personal health information is protected from these kinds of cyberattacks."

On Attempts to Catch the Cyber Criminals:

"UnitedHealth decided to pay the ransom. We're going to ask questions as to why they decided to pay the ransom, in this case, because we know that when you pay the ransom, that only incentivizes more of the harmful behavior by those that are perpetrating these kinds of cyber attacks.

"We have been spending a lot of time and had numerous hearings around cybersecurity. Just two weeks ago, we had a hearing on cybersecurity as it relates to health care, on what steps we need to be taking to protect personal, sensitive health information that has been made available on the dark web, in this case, which is very harmful to millions of Americans.

"This is a very serious issue, and that's part of the purpose of the hearing today."

On the Role of Congress Intervening to Protect Patients' Data:

"This hearing is part of us getting answers. We need to better understand what happened, why it happened, and then we will look at what steps we need to be taking. Certainly cybersecurity, whether it's in healthcare or other sectors, is top of mind for Americans as we see more and more of our information online.

"The Committee is working on protecting American privacy rights online. We've also worked on the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act to give Americans more ownership over their data, but also to understand what the prices are.

"In this case, United has become very large, and the individual, unfortunately doesn't always have a lot of power and control in this, so I believe it's very important that we get legislation that's going to help patients understand what the prices are. We have United as a very large health insurance company that maybe doesn't want to pay the prices, only the doctors that are providing the care and that can be problematic."

[...]

"We have looked at the consolidation, and we passed legislation with overwhelming support-the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act-to address this consolidation to provide more competition in the marketplace, which ultimately brings down costs and gives consumers more choices.

"We're working with the Senate to get them to take action on this, because we're overall concerned about these larger and larger health care systems."

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