United Healthcare and the Theater of the Absurd

Somewhere inside UnitedHealthcare’s sprawling bureaucracy, a switch flipped, and my medical record fell into a parallel universe. That is the only explanation that makes sense after receiving a letter dated November 26, 2025, demanding that I answer a series of “coordination of benefits” questions related to Medicare. The supposed date of service was July 14, 2025. The provider was BayCare Imaging. Reasonable enough, since I had an MRI around that time.

Everything after that turned into satire…The theater of the absurd.

To start, I was not enrolled in Medicare in July. I was on a qualifying commercial plan, and the MRI claims had already been denied once. I called United at the time, reached a representative in the U.S., explained the situation, and she reprocessed everything. She even called me back several days later to confirm that the claims had been paid. The issue was closed.

Or so I thought. Silly me…

The new letter insisted they needed clarification about my dialysis treatments. That would be fascinating if it were not medically impossible. I have never had dialysis. Not one treatment in 66 years, BayCare Imaging does not even perform dialysis. It’s right there in the name…they do “imaging.”

The letter asked three questions:

1. Was dialysis administered at home or in a facility?
2. What was the date of my first dialysis treatment?
3. What was the effective date of my Medicare coverage?

The only one I could answer, and I did so gladly, was number 3, and it would show I wasn’t on Medicare in July. The questions seem to have been generated by someone who never looked at the claim. Or the provider. Or the calendar. Or the decade.

I elected to resolve this “quickly” by phone—a mistake.

My letter to United Healthcare documents the whole ordeal in grim detail: Raven for 18 minutes. Anthony for 28 minutes. Viral for 18. Reid for 41. Then Dave for 72 minutes. Five representatives. All offshore. Each one stuck reading from a script that had nothing to do with my actual issue. Each call ended in frustration, confusion, or a disconnect. In total: two hours and fifty-seven minutes with no resolution whatsoever.

Along the way, I had to repeat the same basic facts until I felt like I was performing a monologue.

• I was not on Medicare in July.
• This is not a coordination-of-benefits issue.
• I have never had dialysis.
• BayCare Imaging does not even offer dialysis.

These are not subtle distinctions. These are basics. Yet each representative seemed bound by scripts and workflows that prevented them from processing simple facts. Only one person, Dave, behaved like an actual human being rather than a cog in an offshore call loop. He tried. He really did. But even he could not reach the right internal team.

This is the hidden cost nobody sees on their Explanation of Benefits. The time. The energy. The frustration.

Then there is the creeping fear that an invented dialysis history may now sit inside my United Healthcare record or, worse, get pushed to external medical databases. As I wrote in my letter, this can affect insurability, pricing, and risk profiles down the line. False diagnoses are not harmless clerical errors. They stick. And they follow patients longer than insurers ever will. I asked United to confirm in writing that any reference to nonexistent dialysis treatments is removed from my records. I should not have to fight a multibillion-dollar corporation to prevent a fictional medical condition from being attached to my name. Yet this is where we are.

What happened here is not unique. Anyone who has interacted with an American health insurer knows the script. Claims ping-pong between contractors. Offshore call centers can only read from flows. Critical thinking is optional. Accountability is nowhere in sight. And patients get trapped in bureaucratic snow globes where every shake makes the picture blurrier.

All of this over an MRI that was already paid for months ago.

I meant it when I wrote that I plan to bill them for my time. Not because I expect payment, but because someone should mark the absurdity of a system that wastes nearly three hours of a patient’s life correcting a problem the insurer created. Then outsourced. Then misunderstood. Then escalated into nonsense.

And some days, the only sane response is to document the madness and send the bill.