A doctor’s letter to UnitedHeathcare for denying nausea medication to a child on chemotherapy
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
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I’ve spent most of my medical career fighting insurances companies (not a Dr) but work work at a large cancer center and our docs are lucky enough to have a dept to handle this stuff. We are very successful in getting denials overturned and have some tips and tricks we’ve picked up over the years. Sad it takes a whole dept to deal with this stuff
I truly hope this is a real letter.
I take zofran due to my horrible nausea and gastro issues… it’s such a life saver without it I probably would have ended it all being ill all the time. I hope this child gets the medicine they need because I legit will share my zofran stash with them 😭
Years ago I worked for a private TMJ practice as their acting “insurance coordinator”. Insurance almost never covers TMJ but when it does, it was fighting tooth and nail. I got to write a very strongly worded letter to the insurance company at one point because an OB/GYN reviewed the patients records and decided that their TMJ treatment wasn’t medically necessary. I basically got to tell them to stay in their lane, stick to ovaries and vaginas and leave the jaw joints to other board certified professionals. They approved it after that. Fucking asshats
# Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed.
― Kurt Vonnegut, [God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/4076)
Let’s be real: Not many *normal* people call for what happened to the CEO of United to be perpetrated against other health insurance CEOs. But I think a LOT of us wouldn’t necessarily shed a tear if it did.
And people wonder why the CEO got gunned down.
What’s crazy is that most of the rest of the world has moved on from this barbaric type of health care
I fought with my insurance company over bills they denied from my cancer treatments. I was sick, lethargic, unenergized and other wise fighting for life. The last thing anyone in that position should be worried about is whether or not your insurance company is going cover costs. The worst part about the whole ordeal was that it was being denied due to a date being improperly applied to paperwork. They wanted to make me eat the cost of tens of thousands of dollars due to a clerical error that was obviously a typo.
What’s worse is that while I’m literally fighting for life, I have to fight with multiple people on the phone for weeks before someone took pity on me and let me know what happened and how they would fix it. Bless that person. Her name was Sarah. She fixed.
Our system is broken and controlled by greedy people.
Whether or not this letter is real, the situation is very real.
These vermin, and their shareholders, are profiting off suffering and death. They are absolute scum.
Forget yourself. Imagine your most loved person in the world slowly and painfully dying over a treatable illness because these people can make money denying them care — despite the fact that you’ve probably paid extortionate costs for their “service.” Why? Because they have enough money and power to prevent you from having a basic right to public healthcare.
For all we know the guy that shot that CEO might have a terminal condition and was denied care and the only way to get care is for him to go to prison. And if you are going to go to prison might ask well make the greedy fucks pay!
I would vote the writer of this letter Not Guilty for whatever further action they might take
I used to work for the Federal Highway Administration. One of the most profane letters we received was.from.a doctor. We had it framed.
Im a nurse and I worked for years in oncology. I had a patient who had to get his leg amputated to prevent the recurrence and metastasis of a femoral sarcoma. He came back to the hospital about 3 months later in a wheelchair with the beginnings of an infected pressure ulcer because he was sitting all day. When I asked how his prosthetic was coming along, he said the insurance company was refusing to pay for it and was giving vague reasons why and hadn’t responded to their appeals or anything. Patient came back again about 3 months after that and passed away from sepsis, likely due to a combination of his compromised immune system and the infected ulcer.
Literally a cancer patient who had his leg cut off (paid for by insurance), but the insurance wouldn’t pay to give him a new one. And it killed him.
Imagine waking up everyday around 8am….. walking downstairs in your multi million dollar house, day hi to your cheating fake tit wife, eat breakfast and then start “WFH” to be someone in the insurance environment. Then enjoying your day knowing you ruined peoples lives. Lmao. We thought lawyers were bad.
Shareholders are just as culpable as the ceo of these companies. Shareholders profits are more important than workers or customers. Maybe changing that priority might make a difference in how these companies operate.
If you aren’t mad, something is wrong.
I’m not even a parent, but I’m ready to throw hands
The gunman was basically like a singular pitchforks and torches.
My late wife was battling Glioblastoma that migrated down her spinal column to her lower lumbar causing excruciating nerve pain and paralysis. Her insurance company dropped her. We went to a Cobra plan until they decided that her allotment of pain killers (Oxytocin) had been fulfilled half way through the year. They switched her to Fentanyl that didn’t help at all. No matter how much we tried to get her back on a drug that actually comforted her, it was like banging your head against a wall. I HATE the way this business operates.
Hopefully assassinating greedy shitbag CEO’s becomes a new trend
Maybe if healthcare ceos keep falling over in the street something will change
Sounds like the Dr. I had as a PCP when I was in my early teens. He HATED insurance companies because he would order tests he felt was necessary – often diagnosing things that wouldn’t have been found until much later.
He was actually kicked out of most health plans because he ordered ‘unnecessary’ tests.
So excited for corporate deaths. Eat the rich.
My dad had a really rare tumor in his jaw, wasn’t cancer, but just as bad i think. Had to get major surgery. At first our insurance wanted to deny the costs (over 1 million) because they said it was… tmj.
It was not tmj. I actually blocked out a lot of what happened because it was pretty traumatic, but somehow my parents got the insurance company to fork over all the money.
Seems like just about everyone is doing something less than shedding a tear over this dude, which….fair enough.
But a reminder that anyone who voted for Republicans is supporting UnitedHealthcare. All the awful things this company does…that’s what private health care is. That’s what ‘cutting regulations’ does. So when you elect politicians like Trump who promise to ‘make business easier’ and fight public health care, you’re directly supporting companies to act in purely profit-centric ways, which can be pretty damn ugly.
I take Zofran fairly often and I would be SO pissed if I got denied coverage for it
I had foot surgery and insurance wouldn’t cover the boot so I could walk so I believe it
here to say:
ZOFRAN SHOULD BE OVER THE COUNTER
Oof. Shots fired.
Ahhhh America, greatest country in the world……. meanwhile I can walk into a public hospital in Australia with a mild concussion, talk to a doctor for free, and walk out with a script for a box of meds that the local pharmacy will fill for $10
Sure would be a shame if something happened to their CEO. . .
Insurance companies don’t exist to help you. They exist to make a profit. And we just take it up the ass and let them by electing all these fucking republicans who are all about profit over people.
When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty🔥🔥🔥🔥