of new york city The public hospital system is paying millions to controversial ICE and military contractor Palantir, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.
Through 2023, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation has paid Palantir approximately $4 million to improve its ability to track payments for services provided in its hospitals and medical clinics. Palantir, a data analysis firm that is now a Wall Street giant thanks to its lucrative work with the Pentagon and the US intelligence community, deploys its software to make the billing of Medicaid and other public benefits more efficient. This includes automated scanning of patient health notes to “inflate fees received from missed opportunities,” contract materials reviewed by The Intercept show.
Palantir’s administrative involvement in the business of fixing people stands in contrast to its longstanding role in helping facilitate war, mass deportations, and dragnet surveillance.
In 2016, The Intercept revealed Palantir’s role behind The company has also attracted global scrutiny and criticism for its “strategic partnership” with the Israeli military during the leveling of Gaza.
But it is Palantir’s work with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement that is facing the most opposition today. The company provides a variety of services to help the federal government locate and deport immigrants. For example, ICE’s Palantir-equipped case management software, according to federal contract documents, “plays a critical role in supporting ICE’s daily operations, ensuring critical mission success”.
“It is unacceptable that the same company that is targeting our neighbors for deportation and providing equipment to the Israeli military is also providing software for our hospitals,” said Kenny Morris, an organizer with the American Friends Service Committee who shared contract documents with The Intercept.
Established by the state legislature, New York City Health & Hospitals is the nation’s largest municipal health care system, managing more than 70 facilities throughout New York City, including Bellevue Hospital, and providing care to more than 1 million New Yorkers annually.
New York City Health and Hospitals spokesman Adam Schrier did not respond to multiple requests to discuss details of the contract. Palantir spokesman Drew Messing said the company does not use or share hospital data outside the bounds of its contract.
Palantir’s contract with New York’s public health care system allows the company to work with patients’ protected health information, or PHI. The agreement states, with permission from New York City Health & Hospitals, Palantir “may de-identify PHI and use de-identified PHI for purposes other than research.” De-identification typically involves stripping away some revealing information, such as name, Social Security number, and birthday. Such provisions are common in contracts involving health data.
Activists who oppose Palantir’s involvement in New York point to a large body of research that indicates that re-identifying personal data, including in measurable contexts, is often trivial.
Beth Harroless of the New York Civil Liberties Union said, “Any contract that allows NYC Health & Hospitals to share highly personal data of New Yorkers with Palantir, a key player in the Trump administration’s massive deportation effort, is reckless and puts countless lives at risk.” “Every New Yorker, without exception, has the right to quality health care and city services. New Yorkers should be able to receive health care without fear that their intimate medical information, or immigration status, will be handed to the federal government on a silver platter.”
Palantir has long provided similar services to the UK National Health Service, a business relationship that today has a growing number of opponents. Green Party leader Zac Polanski recently wrote in a letter to the UK Health Secretary, “Palantir has no place in the NHS handling patients’ personal data.”
“Palantir is targeting the same patients NYCHH seeks to serve.”
Some New York-based groups have similar doubts about what the company might do with sensitive personal data.
“Palantir is targeting the same patients NYCHA wants to serve,” said Jonathan Westin of the Brooklyn-based organization Climate Organizing Hub. “They should immediately terminate their contract with Palantir and stand with the millions of immigrant New Yorkers who are currently being targeted by ICE.”
“The chaos that Palantir is spreading through its technology is not limited to just the kidnapping of our immigrant neighbors and the murder of heroes like Alex Pretty, our fellow nurse,” said Hannah Drummond, an Asheville, North Carolina-based nurse and organizer for National Nurses United, a nursing union. “As a nurse and patient advocate, I want nothing to do with Palantir in my hospital – and neither should any elected leader who claims to represent nurses.”
Palantir’s outspoken right-wing CEO Alex Karp has been a frequent critic of New York City’s newly appointed democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Health and Hospitals operates as a public benefit corporation, but the mayor can exert considerable influence over the network, for example through the appointment of its board of directors. Its president, Dr. Michel Katz, was re-nominated late last year by then-Mayor-elect Mamdani.
The mayor’s office did not respond in time for publication when asked about its stance on the contract.
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