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Several lawyers interviewed by NBC News examined the loan agreement that Mazzola’s practice signed and characterized as a membership contract – during which a party calls the blows and the other has no choice but in agreement. Mazzola financial ruin and other doctors have been faced because of hacking, an event caused by inadequate security at Change Healthcare, made the loans even more unilateral, some lawyers said. Consequently, doctors may have a legal appeal after the aggressive actions that Unitedhealth Group has made to extract loan reimbursements.
The central question surrounding the reimbursement actions of the Unitedhealth Group is “if they have abused their use of this remedy by insisting on the reimbursement before it is appropriate for them to do so given the damages they have caused,” said Daniel Schwarcz, professor at the University of the Faculty of Minnesota, in an email.
In the midst of his clashes with doctors, Unitedhealth Group announced a profit of $ 9 billion in operations in the first quarter of 2025, a jump of 15% compared to the same period last year. Revenues for the three months were $ 110 billion.
Even after the change in processing of health requests, the doctors who spoke with NBC News said they had never been reimbursed for many complaints, because the disturbance meant that they could not submit them within the compulsory deadlines for insurers. Doctors also said that their costs increased after the hack because they had to pay staff to continue the reimbursements.
Mazzola, who estimates that her practice has lost $ 1 million due to hacking, asked Optum to reimburse her costs that his practice has incurred as a result of the violation. But the terms offered by Optum would have prohibited him from being able to continue it because of hacking. She therefore refused to accept it.
“I really thought that Optum, who orchestrate these loans, would give doctors and groups of doctors a reasonable time to reimburse loans by understanding that this financial crisis almost failed us,” said Mazzola. “I mean literally, you are talking about $ 0 on your bank account, and you have 70 employees to pay.”
Patient care delaysDoctors say they were not the only one injured by hacking. Patients were also injured when providers did not have the reimbursement income necessary to buy medication, for example.
“There was a lot of delays in patient care after this,” said Dr. Pruvi Parikh, allergist and immunologist in New York who is a medical director of a practice with six sites in New York and 15 in New Jersey.
The Parikh group borrowed $ 400,000 from Optum to survive the hack. At the end of 2024, he had reimbursed all except $ 102,000, according to documents.
On January 7, Optum threatened to retain reimbursements to the practice of Parikh if the rest of the loan was not reimbursed in days, according to an email.
“It is not possible to find this amount of money in five working days for the majority of private practices,” said Parikh in an interview. “Not only did they not give us time to get back on my feet, but they were like,” pay it now “.”
While the practice responded to the request for an opposite, she estimated that she was $ 2 million due to hacking.
In a statement, Change Healthcare said that he started recovering the funding he had provided “more than a year after the event and with restored services”. The company said that it was handing over to those who did not respond to previous calls or requests by e-mail for more information. “”
The main reason why doctors like Parikh and Mazzola are in this crucible, say the antitrust experts and doctors is that Unitedhealth Group operates so many cogs in the country’s health care machines. By acquiring a range of health care operations in recent years, including doctors’ practices and health management, technology, complaints and financial services – Unitedhealth Group can exercise market muscles on lower participants such as doctors and patients.
