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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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if only the CEO was less evil everything would work out

Well:

The investigation revealed that in 2019, UHC's prior authorization denial rate was 8.7%. Thompson became CEO in 2021, and by 2022 the rate of denial had increased to 22.7%. For both Medicare and non-Medicare claims, UHC declines at a rate double the industry average.[11]

I don't think everything would work out for everyone if the CEO was less evil, but I think a strategy of vigorously denying claims at an exceptional rate is actually pretty evil and destroys a lot of lives in service of increasing margins. That the CEO being less evil wouldn't solve literally everything in healthcare access and funding isn't exactly a defense of the CEO being evil.

Yeah - what happens with a denial?

Well I can appeal, and often the appeal is successful, but generally what will happen is that they'll tell me we'll have a call at X time, which means I need to reschedule or be late to appointments, maybe skip my lunch or charting time, or even stay late. I'll sit on the phone for an extended period of time and then have a retired outpatient OB nurse who has no fucking clue what she is talk about go "oh yeah sure that's fine, we'll approve" or "wow I don't know about this, let's schedule another phone call with a relevant specialist, but I'm going to deny or now" or whatever other insane shit they do.

The goal is to make paying for things as inconvenient and expensive as possible. That means less time spent on actual patient care and more burnout and exhaustion in physicians.