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Report: Feds To Ban Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes For 2 Years (cbsnews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: According to the Wall Street Journal, health regulators have proposed pulling the federal license for the company's California laboratory and banning its founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, and company president Sunny Balwani from the blood-testing business for two years. The letter which the WSJ cited in its report found that Theranos had not corrected problems at its lab in Newark, California, and faced possible sanctions as a result. In October 2015, the WSJ reported all but one of Theranos' analyzers in use were off the shelf, and that their tiny samples may not always have been accurate. The company was facing allegations of data manipulation in late December 2015. Earlier this year, U.S. regulators found serious deficiencies at Theranos' laboratory in Newark, California, putting the company's relationship with the Medicare program in danger. Theranos has said that The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not imposed sanctions on its Newark Lab. "Due to the comprehensive nature of the corrective measures we've taken over the past several months, which has been affirmed by several experts, we are hopeful that CMS won't impose sanctions," the company said in an emailed statement. "But if they do, we will work with CMS to address all of their concerns."
Has it been revealed how much capital they actually raised? A $9b "valuation" probably means they raised a couple hundred million. No doubt a big chunk of that went straight into her own bank account.
so secretive nobody even knows what their actual product is or whether it even works
Their product was well known (quick blood tests that used a tiny amount of blood). But everyone knew from the start that it simply didn't work. A college freshman designing a new way of testing blood that the big labs couldn't figure out how to do? Really?
The ACA didn't actually change the privateness of the healthcare system. It didn't nationalize anything. It simply implemented some minor regulatory reforms, coupled with insurance mandates and major regulatory reforms on insurers, and made more subsidies available.
So it really isn't relevant here one way or another.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Have any of you even used their service? The pin prick testing maybe hype, but they offer normal blood tests at a fraction of the cost, I get the results in 24 hours on their phone app, I can order my own tests, test are a FRACTION of the cost of some place like Sonora Labs. Typical Slashdotters, arguing about non-facts and non-issues... a government agency proposed a threat? whoop dee do