THE FINE PRINT EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Linda Peeno will address UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Philip Witty directly about his career-long role in Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit
Physician whistleblower will break her silence on Sunday, April 28 in THE FINE PRINT before May 1st UnitedHealth Group Congressional hearing
(Dr. Linda Peeno and actress/producer/director Laura Dern attend the World Premiere of Damaged Care. In addition to Laura Dern, Damaged Care stars James LeGros, Adam Arkin, and Michelle Clunie, and features Regina King and Dianne Ladd. It was first broadcast on Showtime in 2002.)
Dr. Linda Peeno, who quit her job as the medical director of an HMO to become a whistleblower and expert witness for patients, was once on the "hit list" of the Managed Care Commercial Health Insurance industry.
Dr. Peeno first testified to the United States Congress on May 30, 1996 about the Commercial Health Insurance industry’s Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit business model. She returned several times over the years to testify about the Denial of Care business model and the preventable harm and death it has imposed on paying American consumers and patients, as well as the Moral Injury it has imposed on ethical medical professionals.
Her first threatening phone call came after she appeared on Dateline NBC, in a segment about a boy in Atlanta with meningitis who was directed by a Kaiser nurse to an emergency room forty-two miles from his home when he needed immediate care. He became severely ill and later had to have his hands and feet amputated. The family was able to sue because the boy's mother was a federal employee. A jury came back with a $45 million verdict.
"After it aired, I got this call from a gravelly voice, 'You better stop doing this stuff,'" Peeno recalled.
“What kind of system have we created when a physician can receive a lucrative income for adding to the suffering of patients? I became a physician to care for, not bring harm to my patients, and I am haunted by the thousands of pieces of paper on which I have written that deadly word, “denied.”
-Dr. Linda Peeno
United States of America Congressional Hearing May 30, 1996
THE COST OF BEING A PHYSICIAN WHISTLEBLOWER
In March of 1998, after she published a testimonial in US News & World Report about the methodical, systemic, Denial of Care business processes of HMOs, she received another call: "It was a male, very nice, professional-sounding voice: 'I am calling to tell you that if you make any more media appearances or testify in any more legal cases, harm will come to you.'"
But it was not until an anonymous woman called her husband on his private line, an hour before his office opened, and warned of harm "to her or someone in your family," that she became scared. The Peenos put in a security system and worked with the local police, but the calls kept coming, often catching her in places where she thought no one would know the number. Peeno, who describes Managed Care as "an industry bigger than tobacco," says, "What they can't deal with is that I've read more contracts and policies and procedures, and have become one of the most knowledgeable people in the country."
But it is not just her own hard-earned knowledge that chills Managed Care Commercial Health Insurance industry executives. It is the fact that moles inside of their companies who "hate what they do" and struggle with the unethical and amoral business practices who feed her information as sources, she said. These sources are crucial to fighting Managed Care in court. "[HMOs] use and misuse the law," said Peeno. "You can't get documents. They tie up the process by either fighting you tooth and nail or they shower you with useless paper. Sometimes, you can't even get the policy and procedure manual."
Peeno notes that many of the job descriptions for claims reviewers at HMOs say, "Must be able to endure extreme stress."
DAMAGED CARE
In 2003, Dr. Peeno, who is the subject of the film Damaged Care (Showtime), was under court order to make known the source of her knowledge about the cost of a sculpture purchased by Humana, Inc., one of the nation’s largest publicly traded commercial health insurers at the time. By revealing her source under duress to meet the Thursday, May 22 deadline, she avoided contempt and imprisonment for up to six months. Although the cost of the sculpture was not relevant in the legal case in which Peeno was acting as an expert at the time, a lawyer who has worked for Humana used the power of the court to acquire information about Peeno’s knowledge of the accurate cost of a piece of sculpture. Humana was not even a party to the case.
As portrayed in Damaged Care, Peeno believed the sculpture cost about a half million dollars. After the movie aired, a Humana employee informed her that the actual cost was nearly four million dollars. Peeno’s source was Clarence Jones — the brother of Humana founder and Board Chair, David Jones. After Clarence Jones revealed the cost of the sculpture in a phone call, Peeno found a document in her mail box the next morning detailing costs of some Humana art, including the sculpture in question. Since, she has infrequently written about the need to bring back Do No Harm Ethics into medicine. She is currently a mother, grandmother and university professor specializing in teaching Do No Harm Ethics to medical students and Masters of Business Administration (MBA) students in the United States.
UNITEDHEALTH GROUP UNDER CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group is one of the ten largest companies in the world. The company, its CEO, CFO and executive board are now being investigated for White Collar Crime and fraud by several entities including the United States Department of Justice. Late this week, a bipartisan, multistate coalition of 22 attorneys general sent a letter to UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty urging the corporation to stop denying and delaying Emergency Payments to providers, pharmacies, and patients harmed by the recent catastrophic outage of Change Healthcare.
In 2023, UnitedHealth Group brought in $371.6 billion in revenue and $22.4 billion in profit. By comparison, it earned $20.1 billion in profit and $324.2 billion in revenue during 2022.