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'Out of control': Cancer surgeon claims UnitedHealthcare questioned her mid-procedure (www.rawstory.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by pelespirit@sh.itjust.works to c/usa@midwest.social

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A breast cancer surgeon had to "scrub out mid-surgery" to call a UnitedHealthcare representative because the insurance giant questioned whether the procedure she was in the middle of performing was really necessary.

Dr. Elisabeth Potter posted her story to Instagram this week, and the post has gotten more than 221,000 likes.

Still wearing her scrub cap, Dr. Potter began her video saying, "It’s 2025, and navigating insurance has somehow just gotten worse."

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[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 16 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It reminds me of enshittification, in that the end product involves both regular people and businesses customers being fucked over (but the regular people are fucked over worse/for long). In this analogy, the doctors are the business customers. Enshittification doesn't apply here though, because this system has always been shitty for everyone, even if it's getting worse. If this scenario "rhymes" with enshittification, it's just because they both are based on capitalism being toxic

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Well, if enshittification is understood as "making it more shitty" rather than "turning it into shit", then it's perfectly possible to further enshittify that which is already shit.

Personally I favour the latter definition since otherwise we would need another word for "making a shitty thing even worse".

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, I do agree with you. However I do like Doctorow's pithy, 3 step formulation, which lends itself to the stricter definition. But he does also say that he may have coined it, but it's not his word, so go nuts

' Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

"Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It’s not just a way to say “things are getting worse”, though, of course, it’s fine with me if you want to use it that way. [...] But in case you want to be more precise, let’s examine how enshittification works. It’s a three-stage process: first, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, there is a fourth stage: they die." ^1

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Yeah, it does make sense that if Enshittification is being used as the name of a process, it's interpreted as a state transition - hence from non-shit to shit - rather than an increase of something.

Ultimatelly this is such a new word that, IMHO, we don't really know how people will end up be using it in general.