Surgeon has to leave anesthetized cancer patient mid-surgery to talk to UnitedHealthcare
A surgeon’s story
Dr. Elizabeth Potter is a cancer surgeon. Until recently she was one of the thousands of unheralded healthcare professionals dedicated to our medical needs. She is now attracting attention, not for doing her job, but for doing her job while being interrupted by insurance bureaucrats. It is a story that could literally be filed under the heading “Only in America …”
The good doctor was performing a breast reconstruction operation when she had to "scrub out” mid-surgery to call a UnitedHealthcare representative. Why? Because the insurance giant questioned whether the procedure she was in the middle of performing was really necessary.
We know this because Dr. Potter posted her story to Instagram this week. So far the post has received 242,000 likes — although, from the tenor of the comments, nobody actually liked the interference she had to overcome simply to do her job. To wit, the noble responsibility of taking care of a fellow human being experiencing the calamity of cancer — and taking the first steps to recovery.
-snip-
“It’s 2025, and insurance just keeps getting worse. I just did two bilateral DIEPs and two bilateral tissue expanders for patients.@
[Note: A Deep Inferior Epigastric Perforator, or "DIEP," is part of breast reconstruction for a cancer patient]
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/9/2296074/-Surgeon-has-to-leave-anesthetized-cancer-patient-mid-surgery-to-talk-to-UnitedHealthcare
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