A surgeon’s story
Dr. Elizabeth Potter is a 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 on a breast cancer patient 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 271,000 ‘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 agonizing steps to their recovery.
Dressed in scrubs Potter shared her experience with the following commentary.
“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]
She continued:
“And I have never had this happen before. But during the second DIEP I got a phone call into the operating room saying that UnitedHealthcare wanted me to call them about one of the patients who was having surgery today — who was actually asleep — and you know, said I had to call right now. So I scrubbed out of my case and I called UnitedHealthcare.”
I have watched many medical dramas. They have emphasized deadly disease, deep despair, ebullient elation, and the soap opera shenanigans of the cast, both regular and visiting. But rarely do they spend time on the reality of hospitals and doctors interacting with insurance companies.
(One exception is ‘The Resident’. A middling effort that does at least address the mundane considerations of hospital finance in America.)
Potter, like every other doctor who sees patients, has to deal with this as part of her job. She goes on:
“And a gentleman said he needed some information about her, wanted to know her diagnosis and whether her in-patient stay could be justified. And I was like, ‘Do you understand this, she’s asleep right now and she has breast cancer.’
And the gentleman said ‘actually I don’t. That’s a different department that would know that information’.
And I was like ‘Well she does need to stay overnight tonight. And you have all the information with you because I got approval for this surgery. And I need to go back and be with my patient now’.”
Naively, I thought a surgeon in the OR was like the captain of a ship in a storm — fully devoted to the task at hand, free of outside interference until the seas calmed and the crisis was over. Boy, was I wrong.
Potter finished with a condemnation of the process that has the first-hand veracity of a survivor’s account of the disaster.
“But yeah, it’s out of control. Insurance is out of control. Uh, I have no other words.”
Potter restates her case in written comments below her oral testimony. In them she adds,
“It’s beyond frustrating and, frankly, unacceptable. Patients and providers deserve better than this. We should be focused on care, not bureaucracy.”
This sentiment is obvious to everyone except MAGA politicians, who would rather protect profits, and stick it to Democrats, than take care of their constituents. And the MAGAs themselves, who are convinced America is best at everything, despite the evidence.
Here is a screenshot of Potter’s post.
The great insurance scam
In its last fiscal year, UnitedHealth Group reported profits of $32 billion on revenues of $386 billion. That’s $32 billion which in ‘socialized’ medicine would have gone to patient care. And that’s not all. When healthcare is managed by the government, the person in charge draws a government salary. On the other hand, the CEO of United Health Group, Andrew Witty received $23.6 million in compensation in 2024.
In addition, Brian Thompson, the murdered CEO of the subsidiary, UnitedHealthcare, received $10.2 million. And the total of all executive compensation was significantly higher than if those executives were government employees. Then there are the marketing expenses, the salaries of all the people hired to deny claims, the fancy offices, corporate jets, country club dues, company apartments, et al.
In addition, every hospital, every clinic, every specialist, every general practitioner has to pay people to deal with the insurance palaver.
It is a myth that the free market runs things less expensively than the government — as healthcare expenditure in the US proves. We spend a greater percent of GDP on healthcare than any other country — while our results trail. This is a second-rate performance the America First crowd should be pissed at. But they can’t get beyond slogans and bumper sticker thinking.
Personal note
I have lived in the UK and the US. In England, the first question asked a patient is “What’s the problem?” In America, it’s “What’s your insurance?”
