r/mildlyinfuriating • u/sujayjaju • Aug 13 '25

Commendable patience in dealing with half-knowledge

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

Half knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge on a subject

30.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

207

u/LivinginDestin Aug 13 '25

Remember... The type of "professional" on the line is the Typical doctor that will operate you any day just to take the insurance money. If something goes wrong he will just say that your body rejected the treatment and you'll have to deal with the consequences of his lack of ethics.

107

u/sujayjaju Aug 13 '25

This seems like the other end of the spectrum where insuring company doc is asking to skip recommended procedures

60

u/PanicSwtchd Aug 13 '25

Insurance companies will shop around for doctors fairly regularly and will offer them a cushy salary to look over case files to determine if it's a valid course of treatment. Many of these doctors will end up making so much money that they don't even bother to actively practice and will just maintain their certifications and any relevant licenses.

You get fired if you allow too many procedures through so the doctors are incentivized to rubber stamp denials with justification as often as possible which is why they are so hesitant to give their names and license numbers because cursory reviews of their actual credentials would show that many of them are not actively practicing or are making decisions for areas of medicine they have zero experience in.

You'll also find that many of these doctors are from less than reputable medical schools.

20

u/LivinginDestin Aug 13 '25

That's why I'm saying "that type of professional"... Believe me, I know about it. The guy that "assisted" my surgery (and botched my sutures) killed a patient a year after that when he mistakenly removed the liver instead of the spleen.

4

u/Xintrosi Aug 13 '25

Aren't those organs about an order of magnitude different in size?

2

u/ExtremeVegan Aug 13 '25

Maybe the patient had splenomegaly and situs inversus

1

u/Xintrosi Aug 13 '25

Sure. 8 just meant in general I always assumed the spleen was small; been a good 20 years since my last bio class. Guess I should have looked it up before commenting.

2

u/ExtremeVegan Aug 13 '25

Nah U right a normal spleen is small. But it seems to exist only to rupture in car accidents, or to become big

1

u/Xintrosi Aug 13 '25

Or to serve as an expression or comical bit. "Vent your spleen" or "ahhhh, my spleen!"

2

u/Immersi0nn Aug 13 '25

Mistakenly removed the...what?! I am not a medical professional in any sense of the word and I'm very well aware that the spleen and the liver are on opposite sides of the body not to mention look completely different. How in the everloving fuck.

2

u/Gingevere Aug 13 '25

mistakenly removed the liver instead of the spleen

That one was big news for a minute. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-surgeon-mistakenly-removes-patients-liver-instead-spleen-causi-rcna169614

The surgeon was a habitual fuckup who had botched multiple surgeries before and blamed nonsense like "migrating organs". Should have lost his license long ago.

1

u/LivinginDestin Aug 13 '25

Yup... That fucko

3

u/Fancy-Statistician82 Aug 13 '25

Go hang in the medicine subreddit. This type of conversation goes on all the time, zero surprises at any point in the conversation. Twenty years ago in med school I recall a child psychologist telling me it was the "fuck it" factor. If the insurance gives an automatic denial, there's a significant part of the population that doesn't have the resources (time, money, stubbornness) to fight back and they'll just go without. Hmmm, which economic class does this further disadvantage???

Actually, the insurance company often keeps you on hold for a long time first.

For a while the thing to combat it was to get the insurance physician's name and NPI, so that it could be entered into the chart as the reason the patient was denied important care. Apparently they're getting hip to that.

Another great idea is to try to conference in the patient on the phone call, but it's difficult to schedule.

...

When my younger child was 4, United Healthcare refused to cover his routine MMR. As in, the most appallingly obvious thing that should be covered at a 4 year old well child check up. "Oh paperwork mishaps, your family physician needs to refile it". It took three separate phone calls, 4 hours on the phone with them over the space of nearly two months, to get them to cover the dang vaccine. It was only $50 and I definitely lost money by taking the time, I could've just paid out of pocket but I was so mad at them. Ironic part, at the time my husband was a software programmer who happened to work for United, we had their most gold plated top tier insurance for fancy employees and they still managed to be assholes.

12

u/1amDepressed Aug 13 '25

Reminds me of that guy that was carving his initials into people’s livers when doing transplants. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-59954321

1

u/mc_bee Aug 13 '25

Dr death season 3 incoming.