Unpacking Claim Letter Shows UnitedHealthcare Denied Drugs to Child with Cancer

Claim:

A letter sent by a doctor to UnitedHealthcare accused the insurance company of denying nausea medication to a child undergoing chemotherapy.

Rating:

Context

Though the letter and the details within it appear authentic, Snopes has not confirmed its authenticity with the author or UnitedHealthcare.

In early December 2024, following the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a letter addressed to the insurance company started circulating online.

(r/interestingasfuck)

Versions of the claim were spotted on Reddit (archived), and X around Dec. 5, 2024, just one day after the shooting.

The letter, allegedly written by a doctor, featured a complaint that UnitedHealthcare had failed to cover the cost of one or more prescriptions for antiemetic, or antinausea, drugs for a child undergoing chemotherapy.

The full text read: 

Dear buttheads at the insurance company,

I can’t believe it has come to this. I have to take time away from my patients to inform you that you are idiots. This whole experience makes me want to vomit. But of course I wouldn’t dare throw up without the approval of my insurance company.

Which brings me to my point: Apparently, you have decided that a child receiving chemotherapy has no reason to be nauseated. I didn’t think I was unnecessarily writing prescriptions for anti-emetics* for [redacted]. Obviously you would know better about the side effects of chemotherapy than me, my peers, and the entire scientific community going all the way back to Dr. Sidney Farber. I suppose my alternative to Zofran and Scopolamine is to let [redacted] know that the nausea is all in his head. However, I don’t imagine you would cover any psychology consultation either.

So I’ll just tell [redacted] to stop throwing up. Thank you for that simple solution. You have saved your greedy, blood sucking corporation shareholders a great deal of money I’m sure. Of course, that would be the bottom line. Feel free to contact me if you need further information about how much you guys suck.

Sincerely,

Identifying details such as the letter header, File ID, and sender name were either blacked out or cropped out of the photo circulating online in all the versions that we saw.

The claim first circulated in January 2022. During this time, it was posted on Facebook and X on Jan. 11 and 12, before reaching Reddit (archived) (archived) on or around Jan. 19.

(Facebook user Marnanel Thurman)

We did not find any plausible posts of the letter before Jan. 10, 2022.

While the image itself appears genuine, we have not been able to confirm the authenticity of the complaint with either the author of the letter or UnitedHealthcare. Therefore, we rate this claim research in progress. 

Image Appears Authentic — AI-Detection Tools Find Low Risk

Ever suspicious of the authenticity of “text on paper” photos, we ran an early posting of the image through Illuminarty, Hive Moderation and TrueMedia.org’s AI checkers. 

Illuminarty found a low (3.8%) probability of the use of AI. Hive Moderation’s scan resulted in an even lower probability of 0.9%, and the conclusion that the image was “not likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.”

TrueMedia.org gave an “uncertain” rating, with the explanation being that the image did not contain faces and so was more difficult for its detectors to process.

A visual assessment of the letter also found that the paper seen in the photo appeared authentic, including the sections with text, with dimples and dents visible in the photo. The text also followed the page and slanted in the way that would be expected of a printed page.

The address and phone number seen on the letter header are authentic points of contact for UnitedHealthcare. The drugs mentioned, Zofran and Scopolamine, are also real drugs used to treat nausea. However, this information can be found with a simple online search and does not require medical knowledge or access to UnitedHealthcare’s services. 

Snopes has reached out to UnitedHealthcare to confirm whether it received this complaint letter in late 2021/early 2022. We had not received a response at the time of this writing.

Sources