UBiome Offices Searched by FBI | Hacker News Reader

UBiome Offices Searched by FBI

wsj.com

83 pointsjbergstroem56 comments

I was stupid enough to sign up for their SmartGut program. They never clearly disclose how much the test costs if you opt to use your insurance. They’re $2700. Not only that, they make it seem like you purchased 6 tests, but the $2700 charge is per test. Their billing practices are questionable, at least from the perspective of the consumer. On the BBB page for uBiome tons of people are complaining. While I can afford the surprise charge, I feel bad for the many that surely cannot.

They promised to only take what your insurance paid and not bill you any remainder. My insurance refused one and paid another. They ate the first one. But it's a ridiculous amount to bill my insurance so i didn't do anymore. They got shady when they started sending emails where just by clicking they would "resequence" your sample.

>They promised to only take what your insurance paid and not bill you any remainder.

This sounds like insurance fraud. [0]

[0] https://www.ajmc.com/contributor/andria-jacobs-rn-ms-cen-cph...

What about all the $5 drug copay promotions? A drug company just refunded my copay.

It’s ok with private insurance, but not public insurance. The federal govt considers it an inducement.

It’s not Ok with commercial insurance either.

If by "ok" you mean legal, yes, it is legal for drug companies to offer co-pay assistance.

Interesting. That make sense but is very counterintuitive.

I've always wondered why a lab has been hounding me to pay a $5 bill when insurance paid them like 99% of the bill. (I refuse to pay them because they only take check via mail--I've offered credit card, PayPal, venmo, et cetera...hoping to make things better for the next person). This explains why they care about getting paid the $5--so they can't be accused of insurance fraud. Anyway, this is just more evidence of how our whole health insurance industry needs a big refactor/replace.

I assume you still pay your copay/coinsurance, they just discount the remainder.

I did uBiome a couple of years ago, paying out of pocket ~$100-$200 or so for a kit. It was ahead of its time and I think it could have a very bright future.

At the time the it was overhyping the present-day usefulness of the data but wasn't lying about it, similar to 23andMe. I'm hoping this is a 23andMe-like incident and not a Theranos, where the latter I guess blatantly lied about the accuracy of its tests. IMO (I occasionally work with microbiome data in our bioinformatics lab), your microbiome data today is nearly useless but will be indispensable in the future as the technology improves, and we need early adopters to use services like uBiome to get there.

I know nothing about uBiome's newer more expensive products and/or how they bill insurance companies. I hope they're not doing anything illegal there, or if there is a simple settlement that can be reached a la 23andMe's FDA case. I can't imagine they are doing anything more unethical than anyone else in the health insurance industry, which IMO is rotten to the core (I just saw my friend's insurance bill for a normal healthy birth + 2day stay at a hospital in SF for over $60,000 before insurance).

Reimbursement is everything in the healthcare industry and the gov't loves to lay the smack down on companies who play fast and loose with the billing rules, particularly if Medicare or Medicaid is involved.

Yes, your friend's hospital bill is ridiculous, but that's doesn't mean it was fraudulent. If uBiome is breaking the rules, they are going to be severely punished.

Video of employees walking out of the building: https://twitter.com/sallyshin/status/1121854424727425024

Anyone else notice the "DCIS Police" on the cops shirt?

DCIS protects military personnel by investigating cases of fraud, bribery, and corruption; preventing the illegal transfer of sensitive defense technologies to proscribed nations and criminal elements; investigating companies that use defective, substandard, or counterfeit parts in weapons systems and equipment utilized by the military; and stopping cyber crimes and computer intrusions.

Priorities: Health care fraud committed by providers that involves (a) quality of care, unnecessary care, or failure to provide care to Tricare‐eligible service members, retirees, dependents, or survivors; or (b) significant direct loss to DoD's Tricare Management Activity.[1]

Maybe they just needed help with the raid and DCIS was available? Or maybe uBiome was ripping of gov't insurers?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Criminal_Investigative...

DCIS explicitly, from the same source, is responsible for investigating, among other things:

”Health care fraud committed by providers that involves (a) quality of care, unnecessary care, or failure to provide care to Tricare‐eligible service members, retirees, dependents, or survivors; or (b) significant direct loss to DoD's Tricare Management Activity.”

Given the general concerns about UBiome, that responsibility has to be why DCIS is involved.

DCIS works for OIG, who the FBI will investigate claims submitted to them.

There's not much in the way of details in this article. Some other news sources are suggesting the company is being investigated for how they're billing insurance companies specifically: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/26/the-fbi-just-raided-ubiomes-...

So who are the board members who signed off on its current business plan? Don't see anything on the site about the corporate board, just the SAB. The Crunchbase list (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ubiome/advisors/curr...) seems outdated in light of the funding it has received from Andreessen, OS Fund, and 8 VC.

My gut bacteria was destroyed by antibiotics plus after my latest round I ended up with the c-dif toxin that can be fatal. My microbiome results were so important in getting my gut bacteria recovered and taking the right probiotics to do it. So, anyone saying the results are useless obviously never saw a set of them. I’m disappointed that this has happened because I was just starting to get my gut bacteria in line through good diet and probiotics. No snake or essential oils necessary! (Puts crystals away and looks at that poster with sarcasm!).

I wonder if all the microbiome sequence data that UBiome collected will wind up in some FBI database now.

uBiome was mostly selling pseudoscience to engineers (who should know better) and the essential oils crowd. Once you have the data you have to do something meaningful with it. For most uBiome users that means heading to YouTube to figure out which guru they are going to follow.

Are they seriously carrying shields and body armor?

The FBI and most US law enforcement is notorious for ridiculous overkill and roughing up subjects of search warrants.

Better to have it and not need it.

Worse to have it and escalate the situation to the point where it is needed…

Police being killed due to a lack of equipment is the bigger issue in my opinion.

Is that better than Police + otherwise innocent people from being hurt/killed because the people freaked out with a miniature army charging at them yelling?

Of course not, but does that happen a lot?

There is no perfect solution, so I think it's better to go with the one that most often protects lives.

I don't have the numbers, but I'd assume wearing body armor and having proper equipment protects more lives than it causes harm (via "freaking out").

really? because police killing people is my much bigger concern...

What is the injury rate for parking enforcement or process servers?

I would agree with you, if that ever happened in the United States.

You never know. Susan from accounting might be packing, waiting for the random day they get surprised raided by the feds...

It did happen in 1986, back when the FBI agents were woefully outgunned. The current trend of militarization is a reaction to that incident, and now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout

> between eight FBI agents and two serial bank robbers and murderers.

What does a SWAT team responding to a heavily-armed bank robbery have to do with raiding the offices of a well-known biotech startup in San Francisco over billing irregularities?

The parent comment asked a rhetorical question implying that FBI officers never died due to being under-equipped. I provided a counter-example, and that event was what motivated a lot of heavier armament in the FBI.

The problem is not that they have equipment, it's that they are incentivized to abuse the entire toolbox for every situation under the sun.

Just because you can find a very weakly related example doesn't make it a good counter-example.

If you can find a single example where raiding a corporate office over financial reasons (or basically anything not involving weapons, violent crime, or a dangerous person) required anything beyond a holstered service weapon then I'll be convinced...

The parent wasn't justifying the behavior, but was pointing out that the escalation in militarization of law enforcement can count the 1986 Miami FBI shootout referenced as one of its causes.

> If you can find a single example where raiding a corporate office over financial reasons (or basically anything not involving weapons, violent crime, or a dangerous person) required anything beyond a holstered service weapon then I'll be convinced...

What about raiding a business selling counterfeit goods, like knock-off watches or pharmaceuticals? What about prostitution or sex trafficker rings? It's plausible that given the shady nature of the business, someone may do something stupid.

And also in 1997

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

It has, in fact, happened on numerous occasions. It happens less often now because police have taken precautions against it.

There are legitimate bases for debate about the details of those precautions, but “there was no problem for them to address” is not one of them.

The FBI engaged in similar militarized theater for the recent arrest of Roger Stone. Dozens of armored SWAT officers, automatic rifles, and a CNN war correspondent van parked outside - all to arrest a solitary man sleeping his pajamas.

For historical context, this trend is due to the pendulum swinging back too far in reaction to the Miami FBI shootout [1], where officers were woefully outgunned.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout

Roger Stone had posted multiple videos of him at a shooting range so its reasonable for them to assume he was in the possession of firearms.

so anyone who has been at a shooting range needs to be raided by a SWAT team when arrested for white-collar crimes?

The thing about a heavily armed society is that it necessitates law enforcement preparing for armed resistance in routine tasks as a default rather than exceptional case, if nothing else to reduce the probability of such resistance by reducing the expectation of it being successful.

You can't reasonably both have a pervasively armed populace and law enforcement unprepared to deal with armed resistance from suspects even when the crime of which they are suspected is not itself violent.

This is a different one:

> As a “Lawman” crew filmed the raid Monday, deputies serving a search warrant blew out the suspect’s windows and leveled his gate, frightening neighbors. Jesus Llovera, who was convicted last year of attending a cockfight but has no record of owning weapons, was arrested on charges of suspected cockfighting, Phoenix TV station KPHO reported. He was unarmed.

> Steven Seagal, Arizona Sheriff Use Tank to Bust Up Cockfighting for A&E Show (Update)

https://www.thewrap.com/steven-seagal-arizona-sheriff-use-ta...

SWAT raids are a terrible way to get the drop on anyone who is actually intending on armed resistance. They are on the other hand an excellent way to make sure that "accidents" happen, as they routinely do. They are an obvious terror tactic.

Possessing a firearm and handling it responsibly should not be justification for a massive pre-dawn raid. Especially when the target has no violent record, worked at and later cooperated with multiple federal agencies, and was a regular guest of the White House for decades without incident.

There was no evidence that the officers making the arrest would be at inordinate risk.

If I was an FBI agent tasked with apprehending a suspect and I knew that the suspect had access to firearms and had "predicted" violent insurrection I would likely have taken the same precautions they did.

When you're approaching someone who is armed, it's generally considered unsafe to surprise them in such a way it's impossible for them to know who you are and threaten their life.

This is a natural consequence of policing in a heavily armed country.

In fairness, Stone also threatened a witness with violence: https://www.lawfareblog.com/roger-stones-arrest-was-appropri...

Most of these corporate types have never even held a gun. If FBI guy comes in in a shirt and tie and asks “what’s the file server password” the IT guy says “I don’t have to tell you that.” If the guy is in tactical gear IT guy coughs it up instantly.

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