Letter of Termination to United Healthcare

Monday, October 20, 2014

To Whom It May Concern,

After countless years of caring for patients who purchase health insurance from United Healthcare, it is with great sadness that I notify you that I will no longer serve as a physician providing care to patients under United Healthcare. As of today, I am severing our relationship without cause with three months’ notice per customary protocol.

Health insurance has evolved from companies such as yours providing “insurance” to companies such as yours providing “healthcare.” The essential patient-physician relationship has been co-opted and replaced by the insurance company-patient relationship, which is tethered to government diktats of Obamacare. Your company now decides which medications you will cover for patients and when they may refill them. You decide which doctors, which hospitals, and which treatments you will cover. The evolution of health insurance is perilous mission creep on steroids. In my estimation, you are practicing medicine without a license.

As a patient whose insurance is purchased through United Healthcare, I have zero coverage if I choose “out of network” physicians. You have sacrificed patient choice for company profit. I will change my personal health insurance company as well.

As long as you collude with the federal government, you have no risk and considerable profit, billions of dollars that should have gone instead directly to patient care. Patients and physicians incur all the risk, inconvenience, and loss of autonomy and choice. The lives and well-being of America’s 315,000,000 patients are at stake.

Costs have escalated while benefits have plummeted. In light of onerous deductibles, current policies are nothing more than major medical plans that come with huge premiums and restrictions and miniscule choice and benefit.

I will not enable the perpetuation and institutionalization of this dysfunctional system. I honor the Hippocratic Oath and the sacred patient-physician relationship. Your company’s policies do not allow me to do this.

Hopefully, you will consider patient-centered, rather than government-centered, policies in the future.

Consider what you are actually selling if you cannot provide the services of actual physicians and surgeons to your patients. Yes, they are yours now. God, help them.

Respectfully and Regrettably,

Kristin S. Held, MD

I sent this letter to United Healthcare via certified mail (for which I have the receipt that they received it) over 3 months ago, from every level from CEO to my local provider relations person and emailed to all as well. To this day, I am still listed as a provider and United says, “Oh, gosh, we’ve had employee changes, and we don’t know anything about this.” I have sent a letter to my United patients reflecting my decision and actions, having respected a obligatory 90 termination without cause period following confirmation of United receiving my letter via certified mail. The letter to my patients can be read in the preceding blog post. http://t.co/8tV7KBNPvr

United Healthcare is clearly inept.

Ironically United HC shows exploding corporate profits on wall street of $120 BILLION for 2013 and $130 BILLION for 2014, while American patients lose their doctors, their plans, their meds, their hospitals, their choice, their dignity, their privacy, and ultimately their Constitutionally derived blessings of liberty.

Further irony- as Marilyn Tavenner steps down as head of CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services), the United HC President will fill her shoes, in one of the most flagrant examples of collusion and crony capitalism, if not fascism, in American history.

I have long contended that Obamacare is the roadmap to single-payer for which United HC will be last man standing. United is the largest provider not only in the US but in the world. They will undercut American corps, propping themselves up with global earnings and Fed gov bailout deals until all the chips fall, and we are left with the Progressive’s Holy Grail of Socialized medicine in the USA, a la a single-payer system, brought to us by the Executive Branch of the US government and their pet and global fave- United HC. Fundamental transformation complete. Mission Accomplished.

Yet, United HC can’t even successfully let me, one measly little country doctor (I mean provider), off their grimy plan.

God help us.

Letter to my patients regarding my United Healthcare provider status

February 2, 2015

Dear Cherished Patient,

Whether I have seen you for the last 25 years or only once, I regard our patient-doctor relationship as private, personalized, inviolable, and not subject to outside interference from overreaching government agencies and insurance corporations.

Taking care of you is a privilege and a blessing.

The preeminent relationship must remain between the patient and doctor, not the patient and the insurance corporation or the patient and the government bureaucrat where you are regarded impersonally, as a line item on a business transaction or data point in “group based” collectivist healthcare.

As the government mandate to purchase health insurance from favored corporations selling “Qualified Health Plans” and other regulatory features of Obamacare kick in, our relationship is being intentionally broken and replaced.

As of today, I am no longer an “in-network provider” for United Healthcare.

Whether or not I am listed as a “provider” on your insurance plan, I remain steadfastly your physician. I honor my Hippocratic Oath and pledge you my all- to provide the very best, individualized, state-of-the-art, and dignified care based on your personal condition, decisions, and choices.

I pray you will choose to continue in my care. I have a fair and transparent fee schedule. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the cost savings associated with direct patient care models, where 80-90% of the cost is not squandered on billing, administration, and third party. You may choose to file with your insurance company for care from me as an “out of network provider”, and I will provide you with the appropriate billing codes.

As a patient, I choose my own physicians and surgeons. I do not let the insurance corporation or federal government dictate who will provide my care, what my treatment will be, or who will do my surgery. I hope you and our fellow American patients will do the same.

Please understand that in order to honor, protect, and defend the sacred patient-doctor relationship, the Hippocratic Oath, and my pledge to you, I cannot continue under contract and control of those who seek to eliminate my ability and autonomy to care for you.

I look forward to many more years with you.

Sincerely,

Kristin S. Held, MD

Letter to my patients regarding United Healthcare provider status

February 2, 2015

Dear Cherished Patient,

Whether I have seen you for the last 25 years or only once, I regard our patient-doctor relationship as private, personalized, inviolable, and not subject to outside interference from overreaching government agencies and insurance corporations.

Taking care of you is a privilege and a blessing.

The preeminent relationship must remain between the patient and doctor, not the patient and the insurance corporation or the patient and the government bureaucrat by whom you are regarded impersonally, as a line item on a business transaction or data point in “group based” collectivist healthcare.

As the government mandate to purchase health insurance from favored corporations selling “Qualified Health Plans” and other features of Obamacare kick in, our relationship is being intentionally broken and replaced.

As of today, I am no longer an “in-network provider” for United Healthcare.

Whether or not I am listed as a “provider” on your insurance plan, I remain steadfastly your physician. I honor my Hippocratic Oath and pledge you my all- to provide the very best, individualized, state-of-the-art, and dignified care based on your personal condition, decisions, and choices.

I pray you will choose to continue in my care. I have a fair and transparent fee schedule. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the cost savings associated with direct patient care models, where 80-90% of the cost is not squandered on billing, administration, and third party. You may choose to file with your insurance company for care from me as an “out of network provider”, and we will provide you with the appropriate billing codes.

As a patient, I choose my own physicians and surgeons. I do not let the insurance corporation or federal government dictate who will provide my care, what my treatment will be, or who will do my surgery. I hope you and our fellow American patients will do the same.

Please understand that in order to honor, protect, and defend the sacred patient-doctor relationship, the Hippocratic Oath, and my pledge to you, I cannot continue under contract and control of those who seek to eliminate my ability and autonomy to care for you.

I look forward to many more years with you.

Sincerely,

Kristin S. Held, MD