This Doctor Spoke Out Against UnitedHealthcare. Now She Says They’re Trying to Bankrupt Her.
Dr. Elisabeth Potter is one of the many critics UnitedHealthcare is seeking to silence.
By Brock Hrehor, More Perfect Union
As she was in the middle of performing cancer surgery on one of her patients, Dr. Elisabeth Potter got a call from a UnitedHealthcare representative. Her staffer described it as urgent, so she scrubbed out to answer the call. The representative who made the call wanted to see whether or not the patient’s inpatient hospital stay following the surgery, which was for breast cancer, was justified.
Dr. Potter’s TikTok video recounting the incident went viral. Shortly after posting it, she received a letter from Clare Locke, a law firm specializing in defamation, alleging that she had made false claims about UnitedHealthcare and demanding that she take down the video and apologize.
Dr. Potter fired back by publishing the letter that UnitedHealthcare sent via their lawyers. Potter also threatened an anti-SLAPP suit against the company. Shortly thereafter, the company backed off from the lawsuit.
Dr. Potter’s story isn’t an isolated incident. It’s one of many allegations of UnitedHealthcare retaliating against individuals, media organizations, or any other critics that speak out against its practices.
Amazon and Vimeo reportedly took down a docuseries after UnitedHealthcare contacted them, saying the series was defamatory. The company has also sued the Guardian for defamation after the outlet released an article that claimed UnitedHealth Group had paid off nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers.
To that end, they’ve enlisted Clare Locke, which has carved out a niche for itself as the legal attack dog for the rich and powerful. The firm has previously been hired by the likes of hedge fund kingpins and Russian oligarchs in an attempt to stop unfavorable coverage.
As it turns out, Potter was in the middle of trying to get her surgery center, RedBud (which provides breast reconstruction surgery to cancer patients) in network with UnitedHeathcare via her consultants. She has personally been in network with the company, but, she told More Perfect Union, after her video criticizing the company went viral, they immediately cut off all communications with her consultants.
Potter’s inability to get in network with UnitedHealthcare could be financially devastating, which she believes to be deliberate. She told More Perfect Union that this affects nearly a quarter of her potential patients, and that as a result, she may now have to shut down her facility.
For a more detailed look into the realities of providing medical care within a for-profit health care system and how Dr. Potter is continuing to navigate this difficult terrain, watch our full report below:
Reporting by Alec Opperman. See below for a full transcript of the video.
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ALEC OPPERMAN, MPU: UnitedHealthcare hired Clare Locke. This is a law firm that specializes in defamation. They've been hired by the Sacklers of opioid fame and Russian oligarchs to threaten journalists and they threatened you. How does it feel to be in the cross hairs?
DR. POTTER: My grandfather always told me that if you weren't pissing someone off, you weren't doing it right.
VO: Dr. Elisabeth Potter made national news for doing what many doctors wouldn’t: Publicly calling out health insurance companies.
POTTER, on TikTok: Insurance just keeps getting worse.
AMY GOODMAN, Democracy Now: Dr. Elizabeth Potter, who’s performing cancer surgery on a patient, scrubs out when she gets a call from UnitedHealth.
POTTER, on TikTok: And the gentleman said he needed some information about her, wanted to know her diagnosis and whether her inpatient stay should be justified. And I was like, do you understand that she’s asleep right now?
VO: Her message went viral, but now, she claims UnitedHealthcare is retaliating against her for it – and that it could bankrupt her.
ALEC: Why do you think UnitedHealthcare is afraid of you?
POTTER: I think it's all about money.
VO: Dr. Potter is part of an alarming trend – she is just one of many people who claim UnitedHealthcare is trying to silence them for speaking out. I wanted to know - why is a $200 billion dollar company afraid of one Texas surgeon? And who else has ended up in their crosshairs? And what is the company trying to hide from the public?
VO: So I went to her clinic in Texas to find out.
VO: This is Redbud surgery center. Dr Potter opened it in 2024, it’s a place where she can reconstruct living breast tissue for breast cancer patients who have had mastectomies. She does so by using the patient’s own skin and fat.
POTTER: I make it live by sewing the blood vessels of that tissue to blood vessels in the chest. So like hooking up a garden hose.. But the hookup there, the connection is so small, it's tiny.
POTTER: I have patients who, you know, live in Alabama or Mississippi who waited two or three years before they could find anybody who would take their insurance and had the skillset to do this.
POTTER: So I built the surgery center. I invested my own money in that; three and a half million dollars in personal loans and another one and a half million in savings.
VO: When Doctor Potter opened RedBud - she was already in-network with many providers, including UnitedHealthcare - as a surgeon. But this new surgery center, with all of its staff and costs, was not. So, she needed to hire consultants to pitch RedBud to insurers.
POTER: So I hired consultants to ask the insurance companies to let me in-network. And that sounds ridiculous, but that's just how it is. Like, I can't just ask them if I just ask, ‘Hey, United, will you let me in-network?’ They say no.
POTTER: And so we were in that process with a lot of insurance companies, including with United.
VO: It was in the middle of this process that Dr. Potter’s trouble with United started – when she went viral for talking about how she stepped out of a surgery to deal with a United rep.
ALEC: Why do you think your video went so viral in the first place?
POTTER: I think that's just a commentary on where we are as a society. I think that the sincerity of the video came across, but I also think that it struck a nerve. Um, you know, I think we, we all heard that when the CEO of United was murdered in December of 2024, and that was tragic and awful. It was so strange as a society for us to have a groundswell of like, cynicism, as a result. People are disillusioned, people have been harmed, and they can't believe that insurance companies are acting this way.
VO: Shortly after posting her video, Dr. Potter received a letter from Clare Locke, a law firm specializing in defamation suits. Billionaire Bill Ackman hired them to threaten Business Insider. The Sacklers hired them to go after opioid journalist Patrick Radden Keefe. A Russian oligarch hired them to threaten the New York Times. Now, UnitedHealth had hired them to threaten Dr. Potter. They demanded she take down her viral video and apologize.
POTTER: So when I got that letter, I was scared. And, um, I had to let it kind of sink in. And then I talked with, um, the attorneys and we decided, okay, I have a couple of options here. We can try to just make this go away. That's what the attorney said, ‘do you wanna make this go away, or do you wanna make a difference? And if you wanna make a difference, it's gonna be painful.’ But I made that choice. I said, ‘Okay, let's do it. Let's publish their words. Let's publish their letter and let America read it.’ And then we responded also to United and told them that if they persisted that we would, um, file suit against them as well.
ALEC: What, what do they say? How do they respond?
POTTER: They didn't respond. That was it. They just sort of went quiet.
ALEC: They backed off.
POTTER: They backed off. Um, except this other thing that I had in the background was I have a surgery center and I've been trying to be in network and I, I knew that there was a chance that they might take this out on me.
ALEC: And so you've paid these consultants to make the case? ‘Please let me save you money. United Healthcare by covering this center in-network.’
POTTER: <affirmative>
POTTER: So with my consultant, there were communications with United. Um, and then after I posted the video, they stopped communicating
ALEC: The surgery center's, not in network with them.. Some people may think like, ‘big deal, there's lots of other insurers.’ But is that true?
POTTER: It's a huge deal.
POTTER: For me, I think it's over a quarter of my patients. When I look at the business model, if I can't be in network with United, that is gonna be financially devastating to me. Um, so much so that I might not be able to keep this place open.
ALEC: You are facing potential financial ruin, not because you're a bad doctor, not because you have a lack of patients, but because UnitedHealthcare you feel is retaliating against you.
POTTER: Yes. I do think that's what's happening.
VO: Unitedhealth claims their decision to keep Redbud out of the network came before Potter’s viral video. Dr. Potter claims her consultants and United were communicating and the insurer had only gone silent after her videos.
POTTER: I think it's just really important to recognize that insurance companies across the board, including United, are making public statements that they are actively trying to save the American people money. By taking surgeries that are being performed in a hospital where it's really expensive and moving them into centers just like Redbud but where it's less expensive and the care is great.
POTTER: They're saying that they want more surgery centers like mine, but they're not letting me in-network. I have a hard time calling it anything other than retaliation, and I guess that’s up to the American people to decide.
VO: Dr. Potter is not the only person who alleges UnitedHealthcare came after them after speaking out. After an eruption of public rage against United following the murder of CEO Brian Thompson late last year, the company has gone on the offensive against public criticism. In July, the New York Times reported Amazon and Vimeo took down an independent docuseries after United’s lawyers sent them a letter warning the series was defamatory. The company sued the Guardian for defamation because of an article that drew on internal documents and claimed UnitedHealthGroup had paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers. Even billionaire Bill Ackman couldn’t escape United’s intimidation - he received a letter from Clare Locke after posting about Dr. Potters viral video. These letters can reportedly cost nearly six figures.
VO: Despite UnitedHealth’s tactics, Dr. Potter told me she won’t stop speaking out. She raised over 500,000 dollars to keep RedBud open. She continues to use social media to share the reality of practicing medicine under the rule of American health insurance.
ALEC: Do you think patients understand what it takes for you to even get them on this table? Like dealing with insurance?
POTTER: No, I don't think patients, especially facing breast cancer, have any idea of how hard it is to provide care. Um, and I'm not saying that because I have any bitterness about providing it. Like I'm not, oh, ‘woe is me.’ I just want the system to be better for them.
ALEC: Thank you so much for watching our video. If you have any ideas or pitches of what we should cover next, leave them in the comments. And be sure to like and subscribe to get more More Perfect Union in your feed.