Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Hackers Targeted Insurer To Learn About US Healthcare (engadget.com)
hackingbear writes: When Anthem revealed a data breach that exposed the details of more than 80 million people, the incident raised a lot of questions: who would conduct such a hack against a health insurance firm? Investigators finally have some answers... and they're not quite what you'd expect. Reportedly, the culprits were Chinese hackers helping their nation understand how US medical care works. It may be part of a concerted campaign to get ready for 2020, when China plans to offer universal health care. Next, we should outsource politicians from China to fix our healthcare system.
Well now they have figured it out can they clue the rest of us in?
Insurers exist to prevent people from understanding how healthcare works.
" Reportedly, the culprits were Chinese hackers helping their nation understand how US medical care works. "
If you're rich, you pay for your medical care out of pocket.
If you're not rich, you pay for health insurance that doesnt cover anything and then you die.
I'd rather trust the Chinese hackers over Engadget, thanks.
Couldn't they just ask? It's not like these are state secrets...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
We'll see if the hackers survive the exposure to the insanity.
What the fuck, are you serious? The last thing we should be doing is accepting advice from communists from hostile governments.
Next, they're going to hack German restaurants to get some tasty recipes. I hear they're also hacking into Martin O'Malley's email to figure out how to run a great political campaign. And looking for dental information from the English. Etc.
Do you have ESP?
Please china... you don't need to learn from one of the worse country when it comes to health care. Unless you wanted to see what NOT to do.
Every time it is the Chinese, the Russians or even the North Koreans. I would like to see some evidence of this. I have no doubt they, and everyone else for that mater, are involved in these shenanigans, but I highly doubt that there is clear cut evidence, or even just circumstantial evidence.
As far as I know every competent hacker uses zombies as proxies which leaves nothing to trace, if done properly.
I mean, would a Chinese politician be any worse than a US politician, really? Any more corrupt? Any less likable? Moreover, the US a basically already implementing mechanisms of rights confiscation, ubiquitous domestic surveillance, state-controlled economy, a police state, etc. We're practically already China, in terms of how the government functionally operates. Would allowing Chinese politicians be all that bad?
with no basis in reality. Eventually, people will realize that the accusations coming from a war-mongering country with murderous foreign policy onto a peaceful country simply doesn't hold up.
The China bashing in western media is just getting ridiculous.
but the one thing you don't do is outsource your ruling class. Unlike the working class, they take care of their own...
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They couldn't possibly fuck it up any more than it already is. It's thus inherently un-hackable. Genius. /sarc.
The United States - the most utterly dismal health care system in the industrialised world, is the last place on earth that anyone would look for a good example of how to implement health care. This looks like more US propaganda. Slashdot is rapidly becoming the mouth piece of a mad US regime, obsessed with China and Russia. The Chinese certainly have nothing to learn from the catastrophic failures of private sector profit from the sick and dying in America. Europe is the place to learn about how to implement health care correctly. The US system is truly awful, amoral, and utterly inhuman. If I lived there, I'd certainly leave. What an awful country.
"....when China plans to offer universal health care."
Jesus, even China is going to offer universal (single-payer) health care. Incredible. I hope that someday the US, with only 1/3rd as many inhabitants, can someday be wealthy and compassionate and forward-thinking enough to offer something similar.
The ACA (Obamacare) is a step in the right direction, but this country needs to step up and offer its citizens universal health care, the same way they do in countries like Canada, Morocco, Sweden, Israel, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Luxembourg, Ireland, Iceland, Germany, France, England, Switzerland, Scotland, Finland, Austria, Mexico, Belize, Trinidad, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, New Zealand.....etc etc
Maybe, just maybe if we stopped waging wars at $3 trillion apiece we'd have money for kooky stuff like healthcare.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
They're doing the right thing if they're looking to stomp down that pesky rising middle class.
The rise of the middle class power in China will soon spell doom for the PRC elite that run the place. (Really this is not a misapplication of the term for once. The PRC is a ruling class that controls both government and business.)
Here in the US we've got disenfranchising the middle class and poor down to a science and the private health care system is one of the biggest tools we have to locking down social and economic mobility.(This is the real reason that Republicans hate social health care)
The Chinese trying to understand our healthcare system? GOOD. LUCK. BTW if you do figure it out, please explain it to us, Much obliged.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Maybe they'll swipe healthcare.gov and fix the design, like they did the F-35.
Table-ized A.I.
A bullet to the back of the head, followed by an unusual decrease in organ transplant costs.
Dear USA
Are you serious?
Feel free to blame China for everything bad - even imaginary incidents or those you perpetrate yourself - we'll believe it.
Noone is going to believe that China is stupid enough to even consider imitating your 'health'-care system.
Is this an attempt to paint the US 'health'-care system as something worth imitating?
Requiem for the American Dream
I think they would be trying to find out NOT how to do it.
The USA has the worst public healthcare system in the developed world on a cost benefit ratio.
Americans seem to have this; well if you get sick its your fault attitude; and that general free public healthcare, as offered by almost every other industrialised nation, is akin to a communist assault.
46137
If you (China) want it for free, you can have it.
The idea that the Chinese want info on building their own healthcare system motivated the hacks seems implausible at best.
It's much more likely that their interests are related to cyber warfare preparedness, developing human intelligence assets, and plain old financial gains through identity theft etc. Consider for instance the value to an enemy of disrupting 100+ million of your foe's medical care during a time of conflict. On the humint side of things, that data (along with federal employee info previously hacked) can identify high-value targets for compromise attempts based on debts, infidelity, etc.
I would say China is looking at how NOT to set up a health care system. You would have to be an idiot to set it up as Obama has. By 2020 Obamacare would have crashed and burned already.
Why oh why would they hack into the *worst* public health system in the western world? Obamacare is the *worst* system. Its the *most* expensive, and provides the *least* amount of service. Adding private corporations into the mix means that anything they offer is the most expensive possible because they don't do anything without skimming off a very tidy profit for whoever is in charge (and its not just tidy, they try and soak all they can while doing as little as possible). Other countries' public health systems are purely not-for-profit, and every public health care dollar that goes into the system is used fully by the system. "Private health insurance" is not part of the equation. And China is hacking it? WTF? Seriously. WTF?!?!?
..Could they not have simple asked?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I offer my services to the Chinese. For a mere $300K I will elucidate in greater detail if required. Medical insurance is not exactly rocket science (and you've already launched something to the moon! Congrats!)
Let's break it down. There are a few components:
Plans - but in a Communist country I'd expect everyone has the same insurance plan, right? Or is one animal great than another?
Member Information - things like name, gender, age, tobacco user, dependents, etc. Again, though, given it is a Communist country, are there really dependents, or is everyone a participant?
Provider information - things like provider name, address, tax ID. I hate to sound tedious, but in a Communist country I don't think you'd have PPO networks, right? Aren't all providers equal?
Premiums - this ties the member to a plan. In a capitalistic society this gets pretty complicated, as there are a vast number of plans, and different rates based on member age/smoker status/gender, etc. As I have now stated ad nauseum, I expect under a Communist system everyone pays the same, so maybe this becomes a trivial issue?
Claims processing - in a Capitalistic system one would take the billing codes, procedure codes, diagnostic codes, etc., match them against the date of service, connect this to the member and the plan, and adjudicate to determine if 1) the claim falls under the plan, 2) who gets paid what, 3) a bunch of other stuff (like lifetime deductibles). Now, if we were operating under a Communist plan, wouldn't all claims be covered?
When I started writing my response, I sympathized w/ the Chinese, as I've been involved with a few claims processing systems, and there's a ton of institutional knowledge. However, under a Communist system, what really is there?
Ps - Honestly, as an American who thinks theAmerican insurance & medical business is a complete scam, I'd love to hear what Sweden and other civilized countries need in the way of medical insurance software.
There have been so many proclamations about what Chinese believe in, how the Chinese culture behaves, how the Chinese 'spell' their names, and so on ... it is as though the Americans have somehow become more "Chinese Expert" than the Chinese themselves
I came from China - and as an ethnic Chinese I can tell you that most of the Chinese people are no longer burying their dead - cremation has been the preferred choice for most people in China, except for the moslems
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Don't countries happily share how their successful healthcare systems work?
Also, they'd be better off learning from their fellow asian countries, several of which have very successful healthcare systems. By government actually safeguarding a free and fair market.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
1. No one wants to know how the US healthcare system works.
2. If they were looking for inspiration, they'd look at Taiwan. It's a lot closer, and people are actually taken care of.
Very funny. Who would target the worst health care system in the industrialised world to learn anything.
Is this article really true. There seem to be an awful lot of pieces on slashdot these days, targeting China and Russia. I do but wonder if someone is running an orchestrated propaganda campaign.
They just want to know whether the alleged state of the US healthcare system is a joke/propaganda/myth, or if those nutty yankeedoodles actually are that thick.
"Mohammedic". Like "Marxist", "Leninist", "Maoist".
They follow an evil cult of Fire And Sword, full with commandments of mass slaughter. Now try to insult me with some communist drivel...
It's not like it's a state secret. Heck, every profession involved has conventions, just send someone to find out what they do! Ask people on the street, watch TV, read trade journals, read the laws and regulations (good luck)! There are a host of easier, legal, means to get that info.
", and used it almost entirely to verify that what we write in out publicly"
That surely is a worthy goal. "WMD" anyone ?
Having said that, these Russkies were all comical clowns. Their tradecraft was so bad it is implausible they were *really* tasked the things to do the FBI said. Much more likely, they were the "victim team"/"decoy team". Providing decoy for Real Team.
This Ms Chapman was using WLAN to exfiltrate her take. And according to Wackopedia she telephoned her father and talked about her fear of being exposed as a spy. Is it really plausible the Russkies are by now so incredibly incompetent ?
They should have partnered with a US insurer and then stolen every bit of inside knowledge. That's the usual business model. But this is cheaper.
They are getting a pretty nice dossier on a lot of people.
Chinese Hackers Targeted Insurer To Learn About US Healthcare
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Wouldn't it have been simpler to 'invest' in a US healthcare provider
And because you believe so strongly in your capitalism-for-everything dogma, even where the health of your population is at stake, you've ended up with the worst healthcare system among all the developed nations of the modern world, by a large margin.
There comes a time when you need to step back and question your beliefs when it is obvious that they are causing an undesired result. Alas I think you don't understand the concept of ammending theories based on observation, and nothing will change in USA until things get so bad that the stench of rotting corpses in the street reaches your nostrils.
People's health is different to iPhones. Treating them as identical is dogma of the worst kind, capitalism at its blindest.
I can't see any valuable lessons on the right way to do health care coming from looking at the US system. It's such Epic Fail maybe they can learn what NOT to do with health as an object lesson of failure.