UnitedHealth, the healthcare insurance giant in the spotlight after its CEO was assassinated in broad daylight, has hired a law firm specializing in defamation to monitor reportage and social media postings about it. The immediate result is the Streisand Effect: more scrutiny of the practices that made it the focal point of public fury at the U.S. healthcare system.
On Jan. 7, a plastic surgeon named Elisabeth Potter posted a video of herself on Instagram claiming that UnitedHealthcare called her mid-surgery and asked her to justify an in-patient stay for a woman who has breast cancer and needed a surgical procedure to treat it. Potter then claimed that the insurer denied the patient an overnight stay and threatened her with legal action for her posts.
She included what appeared to be screen grabs of the letter from Clare Locke, dated Jan. 13. "We are writing to demand you correct your knowingly false, misleading, and defamatory posts regarding UnitedHealthcare," it reads. The lawyers claim she made an error and that is why the insurer reached out, and that it would never have asked or expected her to step out mid-surgery. Clare Locke asked that she post a public apology and retract her accusations.
And then there's this, reports Bloomberg News:
Bloomberg recently reported UnitedHealth contacted the Securities and Exchange Commission about a since-deleted post by billionaire Bill Ackman. "I would not be surprised to find that the company's profitability is massively overstated due to its denial of medically necessary procedures and patient care," Ackman had claimed. UnitedHealth shares fell by 4.3% the next day.
Previously:
• A nifty folk ditty about United Health Care
• UnitedHealthcare names new CEO after last one shot dead
• Luigi Mangione's manifesto
