Are you familiar with Cloward and Piven? They developed a strategy for social change in the 1960s designed to collapse the capitalist system and replace it with a socialist “utopia.” That strategy basically has four parts:
- Overload the system
- Create mass panic and hysteria as the system is overloaded
- Oversee the destruction of the system
- Replace the former system with a new system.
Does this look or sound familiar? Look no further than what is happening in the United States under the Biden administration, and what is happening should become crystal clear. Many people ask why Biden and his progressive buddies are allowing an invasion of our country while at the same time trying to dismantle the criminal justice system. To what end are they doing this? If you understand the Cloward and Piven strategy, you’ll understand precisely what they are doing.
The healthcare system in the United States appears to be on the verge of collapse. For anyone who has been forced to go to an emergency room in the post-COVID era, you know exactly what we are talking about. Patients talk about being stuck in emergency room hallways on gurneys for hours, sometimes days, waiting for a room to be seen. Where one used to be able to get emergency tests within a matter of days or even hours, it now sometimes takes weeks to get such tests or exams.
A couple of weeks ago, much attention was paid to an apparent cyberattack that targeted the AT&T cellphone network. The network news mainly focused on that outage while ignoring a cyberattack with much more devastating potential, glancing over an attack that targeted pharmacies.
However, a chilling New York Times piece paints a frightening picture of the fragility of medical care providers after a cyberattack two weeks ago, which the Times says “paralyzed the largest U.S. billing and payment system in the country.” That attack impacted significant parts of an electronic payment system operated by Change Healthcare, a significant portion of UnitedHealth Group. That outage possibly impacted thousands of providers who could not obtain insurance approval for a wide range of services, including prescriptions and mastectomies, nor could they be paid for such services.
That cyberattack has led a variety of groups, from lawmakers to hospital industry executives, to put pressure on the federal government, which is more focused on proper pronouns and screwing over Israel, to provide some type of relief. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services agreed to work toward relieving financial pressure on those affected by the attack, including hospitals and doctors who receive Medicare reimbursements.
What was the impact? It ranged from an urgent care chain in Ohio being unable to pay rent and other bills to cover salaries; a cancer center in Florida working to obtain money to pay for chemotherapy drugs, otherwise, it will be unable to provide critical treatment for patients; and a Pennsylvania primary care doctor is “slashing expenses and pooling all her cash–including her personal bank stash–” in order to remain in operation for the next few months, the Times said.
Under a proposed band-aid offered by the federal government, providers could apply to Medicare for accelerated payments. This funding would closely mirror the funding offered during the pandemic, allowing those providers to stop the bleeding, at least temporarily. Federal officials have also asked health insurers to waive or relax rules that require prior authorization for some treatments and have asked insurance companies that offer private Medicare plans to supply advanced funding.
While HHS is trying to avoid or mitigate further disruptions, it isn’t yet known whether the measures taken thus far will be able to offset the difficulties already experienced by Change Healthcare, which, as of the time of publication, was still offline. Change Healthcare links doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies to insurers, and it is estimated it handles approximately one-third of patient records in the U.S.
According to the hospital industry, the government response must be more adequate.
The cyberattack also drew attention to the consolidation of medical companies and other healthcare entities under UnitedHealth Group. Federal prosecutors initially challenged this move when it was proposed in 2022. The government lost that case, however.
As of yet, United hasn’t been able to provide a timeline for when the critical Change Healthcare network will be back up and running.
In an update on its website, United said, “Patient care is our top priority, and we have multiple workarounds to ensure people have access to the medications and the care they need.”
The cyberattack is more of a ransomware attack. The Times reported that on March 1, a Bitcoin address affiliated with the alleged hackers, known as either AlphV or BlackCat, received a $22 million transaction, leading some to speculate that it was a ransom payment made by United, which declined to comment on the transaction, Wired wrote.
The attack has proven, however, that patient data and health information remain vulnerable to bad actors. In the case of Change, it handles approximately 15 billion transactions a year.
The hack's effect has been widespread. The company needed help to connect providers with insurance companies to submit bills and receive payments, delaying tens of millions of dollars in insurance payments to providers. It also impacted pharmacies, which could not fill prescriptions because they couldn’t verify insurance, leading to a stockpile of unpaid claims in the two weeks since the attack.
Ryan S. Higgins, a lawyer for McDermott Will & Emery who advises healthcare organizations on cybersecurity, said the cyberattack “absolutely highlights the fragility of our healthcare system.” The same group that conducted a cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline in 2021 is believed to be responsible for the Change cyberattack.
On the pharmacy side, the crisis has passed, according to Patrick Berryman, senior vice president for the National Community Pharmacists Association. “Almost two weeks in now, the operational crisis is done and is pretty much over,” Berryman said. That is a turnaround from the initial days of the attack when pharmacies couldn’t fill prescriptions if they could not verify insurance companies. That forced some patients to pay cash to obtain their medicine or vaccinations.
Others in the healthcare industry are not so lucky, however. For example, in Columbus, Ohio, Arlington Urgent Care has approximately $650,000 in unpaid insurance reimbursements, leading the chain’s owner to figure out how to pay bills. According to Molly Fulton, chief operating officer of the chain of five urgent care centers, they've had to turn to lines of credit from banks and tap personal savings to pay employees for about two months.
“This is worse than when Covid hit because even though we didn’t get paid for a while then either, at least we knew there was going to be a fix,” Fulton said. “Here, there is no end in sight. I have no idea when Change is going to come back up.”
The cyberattack, which comes at the same time as an estimated eight million illegal aliens have invaded the United States, has been labeled “the most significant cyberattack on the U.S. health care system in American history” and asked the federal government and UnitedHealth Group to provide emergency funding. Meanwhile, the American Hospital Association, a trade group, slammed United’s efforts to this point.
“It falls far short of plugging the gaping holes in funding,” Richard J. Pollack, the group’s president, wrote in a letter to Dirk McMahon, president of United.
“We need real solutions–not programs that sound good when they are announced but are fundamentally inadequate when you read the fine print,” Pollack said.
The loan program also falls far short of what is needed.
For example, in Attleboro, Mass., Diana Holmes, a therapist, was given an offer of $20 per week from Optum, but she has been unable to submit roughly $4,000 a week in claims since Feb. 21. “It’s not like we have reserves,” she said.
Holmes complained that Change or Blue Cross of Massachusetts has communicated little, calling that “maddening.” She has been forced to find a new payment clearinghouse, which requires an upfront fee and a year-long contract. “You’ve had to pivot quickly with no information,” she said.
Meanwhile, in Exton, Pennsylvania, Dr. Christine Meyer, who owns and operates a primary care practice there, has accumulated “hundreds and hundreds” of pages of Medicare claims, which she has put in a FedEx box and sent to the agency. She is also looking at ways to cut expenses and has had to consider hoarding all her cash and line of credit if needed, which would help her survive for about two and one-half months.
However, Optum’s temporary funding assistance program falls far short of what she needs. She received a loan of only $4,000, while her typical expenses total approximately one-half million dollars, which she submits through Change. “That is less than one percent of my monthly claims, and, adding insult to injury, the notice came with this big, red font that said, ‘You have to pay all this back when this is resolved,’” Meyer said. It is all a joke.”
Some lawmakers are pushing Medicare officials and government officials to address the situation by providing additional cash to hospitals. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote a letter recently asking federal health officials to provide accelerated payments.
“The longer this disruption persists, the more difficult it will be for hospitals to continue to provide comprehensive health care services to patients.”
The cyberattack on Change Healthcare shows the vulnerability of our healthcare system. That system could very well end up collapsing under the weight of the invasion of illegals into our country, with some estimating a minimum of eight million such illegals having entered the US. At the same time, some have estimated that to be as high as twenty million.
Currently, except for California, illegal aliens do not qualify for government-paid healthcare. In California, under that state’s Medi-Cal program, illegals do qualify for government-paid healthcare under the program, which is the state’s version of the federal Medicaid program.
However, some states, including Connecticut, offer health insurance to illegal immigrant children. That program, Husky Health, is available for children up to 15 years old. However, some “immigrant rights” groups are pushing to expand the program to all illegal aliens, according to WTNH-8. Husky Health currently covers 10,000 illegal immigrant children, however, advocates say there are 100,000 illegal aliens (and growing) living in the state.
According to NPR, there are eleven states and the District of Columbia that offer full health insurance to over one million low-income illegals despite their immigration status.
It is only a matter of time, especially if Democrats somehow gain majorities in both chambers of Congress and the presidency, that there will be a push to provide Obamacare to all, including between eight and twenty million illegal aliens. If that happens, it is not sustainable for our healthcare system to provide care to everyone. That will lead to a Cloward and Piven wet dream, the collapse of our capitalist system, and the end of the United States as we know it.
It is for this reason that deep-state Republicans and Democrats must be removed from federal office. It is crucial to the future of our republic.
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