Systemic Denial After Surgery: A Survivor’s Report of Sabotage by UnitedHealthcare

📅 Surgery Date: August 13, 2024

🏥 Facility: Denver Health

💰 Cost of Procedure: $46,686.94

🧾 Covered by Insurance: 100%

🔐 Insurer: UnitedHealthcare / Rocky Mountain Health Plans

🩺 Post-Surgical Hormone Crash: A Manufactured Emergency What should have been a period of rest and healing became a medical and psychological crisis—not because of my surgery, but because of what happened afterward.

After my gender-affirming bottom surgery, I requested a prescription change from oral estradiol to estradiol valerate injections—a safer option due to my history of blood clots around 2016. This was a medically supported choice made during my once-yearly appointment with my long-term OB/GYN (who has treated me since 2008). My provider wrote a brand-new prescription for injectable estrogen specifically to reduce clot risk post-operatively.

But UnitedHealthcare said no.

They denied the medication. They claimed it was “non-formulary.” They told my doctor I didn’t need it.

Let me be absolutely clear: this wasn’t about dosage. Estradiol vials have a hard 28-day discard rule after being punctured—something coded directly into the pharmacy packaging (see ⬇️). This was about power and ideology, not medicine.

💊 Hormone Crash: Physical and Psychological Breakdown When United denied my prescription, I was forced to ration old pills—cutting my dose to make them last. The crash was brutal: 😵‍💫 Extreme dissociation, mental fog

😢 Emotional collapse and intensified depression

🥵 Hot flashes, fatigue, night sweats

😡 Rage, irritability, panic

🧠 Cognitive shutdown—loss of focus, memory, and control

This wasn’t a minor inconvenience. It was a full-body, full-mind, full-spirit collapse—engineered by an insurance company that had no medical justification to interfere.

And I wasn’t the only one.

🧑‍⚕️ OB/GYN Resistance: Fighting Back Against Discrimination My OB/GYN did everything right. She submitted multiple prior authorizations—at least three. All denied. At one point, we spent over an hour on a joint conference call with UnitedHealthcare, trying to plead with them to follow the law. She pushed. She explained the blood clot history. She explained the discard window. She fought.

United refused.

Eventually, out of desperation, she sent in a script for oral estradiol again. United approved the pills. Not because they were safer. (They aren’t.) But because they could feign “compliance” while still denying what I truly needed.

Finally, on December 12, 2024—three full weeks later—they approved my injectable script.

📦 What Stockpiling Looks Like After Betrayal

What you see above is seven unopened vials of estradiol valerate. That’s 35mL—because I don’t trust them. Because I don’t feel safe. Because if United takes this away again, the consequences wouldn’t just be clinical. They’d be existential.

I am stockpiling my survival. Because I know what it feels like to be cut off. And because I know they’ll try again.

❌ This Was Not a Glitch. It Was a Political Attack. UnitedHealthcare didn’t just violate ethics. They violated the law.

Under C.R.S. § 10-16-104.3(3)(b), Colorado law prohibits health insurance carriers from denying coverage for gender-affirming care when such care is:

“Prescribed or recommended by a licensed health care provider and medically necessary to treat a condition related to the individual’s gender identity.”

The Plaintiff’s injectable estradiol valerate prescription—issued by a long-term OB/GYN provider following gender-affirming surgery—met every requirement under this law. There was no lawful basis for denial.

The Colorado Division of Insurance (DOI) has also issued formal guidance clarifying that:

Formulary exclusions may not be used to deny transition-related care, including hormone therapies.

📍 Legal citation: “Per DOI Bulletin B‑4.126 (2022), insurers may not exclude gender‑affirming hormones from formulary, nor may they deny coverage based solely on route or dosage. United’s denial of injectable estradiol violated both this guidance and state law.”

Insurers must provide equivalent alternatives if a specific formulation (e.g., injectable versus oral) is denied.

Dosage differences alone cannot be a valid basis for denial when a 28-day expiration cycle, not daily usage, determines refill needs.

🔬 Evidence: 28‑Day Limit on Multi‑Dose Injectable Vials Medical and regulatory authorities uniformly affirm that the expiration—or beyond-use date (BUD)—for opened multi-dose injectable vials is 28 days, unless explicitly extended by the manufacturer. This standard governs safety and refill necessity, regardless of dose frequency or remaining volume.

1. United States Pharmacopeia (USP) Chapter <797> According to USP <797>, the primary authority for sterile compounding:

“Chapter 797 of United States Pharmacopeia recommends up to 28 days as the beyond‑use date for opened or ‘entered’ (i.e., needle‑punctured) multi‑dose vials of sterile pharmaceutical injection containing antimicrobial preservatives.” — American Regent Estradiol Valerate Prescribing Information, citing USP <797> standards.

2. FDA Guidance The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reinforces this rule in its official labeling guidelines:

“The beyond‑use date … for an opened or entered … multiple‑dose container is 28 days, unless otherwise specified by the manufacturer.” — FDA: Labeling Guidelines for Injectable Products (21 CFR § 201.57)

3. CDC Injection Safety Protocols The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) injection safety guidelines mirror this requirement:

“Multi-dose vials must be dated and discarded within 28 days after first use, unless the manufacturer specifies otherwise.” — CDC Safe Injection Practices Coalition

Want PROOF? CLICK!

📌 Legal Relevance: UnitedHealthcare’s refusal to refill estradiol valerate based on remaining volume ignores these mandatory safety protocols. The refill necessity is governed by expiration timing, not dose consumption. Once punctured, the vial becomes unsafe for use after 28 days—even if hormone remains.

Any denial that fails to acknowledge this standard violates basic medical safety and undermines state and federal gender-affirming care mandates, including Colorado’s statutory protections under C.R.S. § 10-16-104.3(3)(b).

UnitedHealthcare violated each of these principles. They denied coverage for a medically necessary, legally protected treatment—despite a valid prescription, a supportive provider, and a medical rationale rooted in blood clot risk and post-operative care. They forced the Plaintiff to ration medication, suffer physical and emotional harm, and eventually seek an alternate formulation—one that carried greater health risks.

This was not clinical decision-making. This was

Deliberate Sabotage.

And it was illegal.

These denials weren’t just “miscommunications.” They were targeted and systematic.

How do I know?

Because other trans friends in Colorado—different doctors, different prescriptions—had the same thing happen:

❌Denials of testosterone

❌Denials of estrogen

❌Denials of post-op appointments

❌Hours of appeals that led nowhere

❌Psychologically destabilizing delays

And all of this started in the weeks after my surgery.

🏛️ Coordinated Timeline of Political Retaliation Let’s match the timeline:

August 13, 2024: My bottom surgery is performed.

October 16, 2024: Donald Trump declares: “On the first day we will revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies on transgender treatments… we will stop taxpayer funding for transgender procedures and drugs.”

December 12, 2024: Then-CEO of UnitedHealth Group Andrew Witty states: “We will continue to guard against unnecessary care.”

Those words are not coincidental. They reflect a coordinated political and corporate agenda. To label gender-affirming care as “unnecessary.” To withhold it. To eliminate access by weaponizing bureaucracy.

This wasn’t healthcare.

It was a purge.

It was administrative erasure in action.

⚖️ Intentional, Retaliatory, and Illegal UnitedHealthcare’s actions were not a mistake. They were a calculated breach of trust, law, and bodily autonomy. They used insurance denial as a method of elimination—of denying care, breaking spirits, destabilizing recoveries, and pushing trans people out of the system entirely.

And it worked—for a while.

But now I’m speaking.

This is not an isolated grievance. This is part of a pattern. It is deliberate, documented, and legally indefensible.

United broke the law. They knew what they were doing. And they did it anyway.

✊ You Don’t Get to Erase Me Quietly.

If you’re reading this, then the defendants didn’t settle.

They chose silence.

They chose denial.

They chose the gamble.

But here I am. 📢 Still talking. Still posting. Still surviving. And now, the world gets to see what they did.

#AdministrativeErasure

#HormoneJustice

#SurvivorNotSilenced

#UnitedHealthcare

#RockyMountainHealthPlans

🩸 “You don’t get to erase me quietly.”

Metadata Files Explained Short explainers unpacking how call logs, risk scores, algorithmic flags, and internal metadata were quietly used to profile—and ultimately erase—a human being from her own medical protections.

📞 How a Phone Call Became a Police File Your voice should never be a trigger for law enforcement. But in this case, it was. Routine member service calls—conversations that should have been protected by HIPAA and reviewed only by qualified personnel—were recorded, logged, and parsed for escalation risk. Instead of clinical staff evaluating emotional content or mental health nuance, non-clinical reviewers and possibly automated systems used call metadata to assess "threat posture." No psychologist ever intervened. No clinical review board made a decision. Instead, these calls became building blocks in a narrative of deviance, constructed not through diagnosis, but through data. The metadata associated with these calls—timestamps, call frequency, duration, internal routing notes, and escalation tags—was later included in a disclosure packet sent to law enforcement. Audio recordings were submitted weeks after the fact, stripped of real-time urgency. In effect, the calls were retroactively weaponized to justify law enforcement intervention where no emergency ever existed. The call was lawful. The message was emotional. The voice was distressed—but no more than any person under chronic, identity-linked medical harm. The choice to turn that into a police file was deliberate.

⚠️ "High Risk" Without Diagnosis In UnitedHealthcare’s internal systems—as with many large insurers—certain flags have outsized consequences. One of the most consequential is the label "High Risk." In theory, this designation is meant to help prioritize vulnerable patients. In practice, it is often used to mark those who disrupt workflows, challenge gatekeeping, or call too frequently. Here, the "High Risk" designation was not based on any formal psychiatric diagnosis. In fact, no treating mental health professional appears to have made such a judgment. Instead, behavioral notes, internal codes, and interaction frequency likely triggered the escalation. These flags can be assigned by call center workers, non-clinical staff, or through auto-generated risk scoring. The result: someone deemed administratively difficult becomes categorized as dangerous. Crucially, these labels are invisible to patients. There is no appeals process. No clinical review. Once marked, the member may find themselves excluded from protections—pushed out of therapeutic pathways and into the carceral ones. Law enforcement became the next contact point. Not care. Not support. Not help.

🧠 Emotional Flagging by Algorithm Call centers are increasingly driven by artificial intelligence. Sentiment analysis, emotion detection, voice stress scoring—these are sold as tools for quality assurance, but they can also serve as justification for escalation. If a voice wavers. If tone is misread. If volume increases, or cadence shifts. These patterns can be logged, tagged, and flagged. Systems trained on normative baselines are not trained for trauma survivors, neurodivergent speech, or the linguistic patterns of marginalized people. They are trained on patterns that reflect corporate expectations of docility. In this case, emotional distress linked to gender-affirming care was interpreted not as trauma, but as threat. Emotional expression became code for danger. It is likely that algorithmic filters or internal scorecards tagged the Plaintiff’s voice as unstable. These tags then moved her from support pathways into surveillance ones. The AI didn’t diagnose—but it criminalized.

🚫 When Metadata Becomes a Weapon HIPAA protects the content of communication. But metadata—the information about the communication—often slips through legal cracks. In this case, it was the metadata, not the clinical substance, that was used to build a false narrative of danger. Metadata includes: Call timestamps Duration Number of calls over a given period Departments contacted Keywords flagged in subject lines or routing notes Notes entered by non-clinical staff By aggregating this metadata, UnitedHealthcare or its agents constructed a timeline. But it wasn’t a care timeline—it was a pattern profile. These are the same tactics used in counterterrorism frameworks: frequency analysis, behavioral pattern detection, digital signals that predict escalation. And when these are interpreted without context—without understanding trans trauma, medical denial stress, or neurodivergent communication—metadata doesn’t protect. It punishes.

📬 What Was Sent, and When One of the most disturbing facts of this case is not just what was disclosed—but when. The PHI disclosure to law enforcement happened 35 days after the last known contact. There was no emergency. No live threat. No judicial order. And no immediate clinician concern. Yet audio recordings of legally protected calls were transmitted to police, alongside notes and attachments framed to cast the Plaintiff as unstable. This wasn’t crisis management. It was narrative management. The metadata—submission timestamps, envelope contents, routing emails—proves it. The delay alone negates any justification under HIPAA’s emergency exception (45 C.F.R. § 164.512(j)). That timing reveals intention. When care is needed, clinicians act immediately. When retaliation is intended, metadata shows the delay.

🧾 Internal Cover Letters and Submission Language Perhaps most chilling of all: the internal documents that accompanied the disclosure. These were not mere transmittals. They were framing tools. Staff wrote cover letters to accompany the PHI. These letters did not neutrally report facts. They selected, emphasized, and omitted. They cast the Plaintiff’s calls in a light of behavioral concern, cherry-picked moments of distress, and implied risk without stating it overtly. The metadata from these communications—the authorship, timestamps, intended recipients, and version history—can and should be analyzed in court. These are not neutral administrative notes. They are rhetorical acts of erasure—bureaucratic storytelling designed to turn a patient into a perceived threat. And once sent to police, they achieved exactly that.

🧠 What to Expect in Discovery Everything described above is discoverable. Dashboard audit trails Risk scoring algorithms Call tagging logic Staff training manuals Internal escalation pathways Version history on submission cover letters Email chains that discussed whether to refer Names of those who made the decision—and those who failed to stop it HIPAA protects against unjust disclosure. But when disclosure occurs anyway, the systems that enabled it become the subject of scrutiny. Discovery will not just reveal what was said. It will reveal how they decided who to silence—and what tools they used to make that decision. Metadata doesn’t lie. And now, it speaks.

📣 Delivered. Opened. Tracked. 🗓️ Sent: July 15, 2025 📎 Attachments:

Final Complaint – Dorn v. UnitedHealthcare

Unbranded “Surveillance by Proxy” Dossier 📍 Delivered to: UnitedHealthcare and Rocky Mountain Health Plans 🕵️ Tracked Page Views (First 5 Minutes): 22 🌍 Unique Visitors After Delivery: 42 🕒 Real-Time Access Confirmed From:

Grand Junction

Denver

San Jose, CA

Unknown (Internal Routing)

I told them:

“I saw your team on the website.”

Then I delivered everything:

The final 413-paragraph complaint

The metadata logs

The unbranded exposé

And a firm deadline: August 8, 2025 – 11:59 p.m. MST

Since then:

42 first-time users accessed this site

22 pages were viewed in under 5 minutes

Two users in San Jose—far from Colorado—dug through the material

Then the map… went quiet again

They know what’s coming. They’ve opened it. And now they’re watching silently, hoping the rest of the world doesn’t.

🧨 The Clock Is Ticking. They have 24 days to respond. The media rollout is already scheduled. And the story no longer belongs to them.

🔗 AdministrativeErasure.org This record is timestamped. This delivery is verifiable. This silence is strategic.

We Know What You’re Looking At Nine views. Three agents. You didn’t just look. You filtered by category. You followed the whistle. You confirmed the metadata.

And now? So have we.

2. Metadata Log Public Entry (timestamped): July 15, 2025 – 5:12 PM MST Real-time analytics confirm direct access to: Complaint, Exhibit Z, Exhibit AA, I See You, and Legal Commentary Simulation by users navigating from UnitedHealthcare-linked correspondence. Logs archived.

3. Backend Entry in Complaint or Motion: “Defendants and/or their agents confirmed receipt and active review of public documentation by no later than July 15, 2025 at 5:12 p.m. MST, including whistleblower exhibit (AA), surveillance exposé (Z), and formal complaint structure. Continued denial after this timestamp may constitute bad-faith litigation posture.”

Attention UHC, i see you.....

Two users. Four spikes. Thirty minutes. Right after I emailed you the link.

You opened the site. You read the complaint. You confirmed it was real.

So let’s not pretend you haven’t seen it. Let’s not pretend you don’t know what this is.

The metadata doesn’t lie. The disclosure happened. The timeline is intact. And the public is watching now too.

🕳️ You looked into the abyss. Welcome to the Administrative Erasure record.

You didn’t just view the homepage. You clicked Exhibit AA. You scanned court filings. You read the warning.

Metadata never lies. Erasure isn’t a concept. It’s a process. And now it’s logged. and there is more, im just watching you watch me. Quid Pro Quo

There was a moment—one I can pinpoint with surgical clarity—where I realized they weren’t just trying to deny me care.

They were trying to disappear me!

The surveillance. The metadata. The disclosure. Not because I broke a law. Not because I posed a danger. But because I became inconvenient.

My name didn’t raise a red flag. My identity did.

UnitedHealthcare had no legal reason to send my personal medical information to police.

There was no warrant. No subpoena. No imminent danger. Just a phone call where I dared to assert my rights. Just a timeline that challenged their narrative. Just a trans woman on Medicaid who refused to be silent.

So they flipped the script. And they framed me.

Not as a person.

But as a potential threat.

And that is what happens when corporate systems are allowed to function like state intelligence. This wasn’t about safety. It was about containment. It was about eliminating the variables they couldn’t control.

It didn’t matter what I actually said. It didn’t matter that I followed the law. They labeled me unstable. Flagged me as risky. And then quietly delivered that label to the Grand Junction Police Department.

That is administrative erasure.

They didn’t kick down my door. They didn’t need to. Because when a bureaucratic label says "dangerous," you don’t need to be dangerous. You just need to be documented.

The day I felt so small was the day I felt like Luigi.

Not Mario. Not the hero. Not the face on the box.

Just the afterthought. The sidekick. The shadow.

That’s what it felt like when they erased me. When my voice was stripped of context. When my medical records were weaponized. When I was framed not as a person—but as a potential threat.

Luigi never asked to be second. He just wanted to exist. To matter. To be seen.

And that’s all I ever wanted, too.

So I built something they can’t erase.

AdministrativeErasure.org

If you want to see what they tried to bury, look here: https://www.administrativeerasure.org/2025/07/the-35-day-myth-of-imminent-threat

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a paper trail.

And it ends with a truth they can’t control.

🧷 The Words on the Bullets: “Deny. Defend. Depose.” Enters National Consciousness

On December 5, 2024, journalist Ivy Griffith published a viral report titled “Deny, Defend, Depose” May Have Been Found on Bullets From UnitedHealthcare Shooting — Here's the Meaning. The article explores the chilling possibility that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was not only targeted—but that his killer left behind a message:

Deny. Defend. Depose. Engraved into bullet casings.

Immediately, speculation ignited across Reddit, Twitter, and news outlets. But one Redditor, Vulkyria, provided context that struck a cultural nerve:

“It’s a change-up of the book title, Delay. Deny. Defend. Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It. by Jay M. Feinman.”

They concluded:

“This is the beginning of the resistance. It should be turned into a bumper sticker. Deny. Defend. Depose. Repeat.”

The Phrase Is Now National This article marks a turning point:

The phrase “Deny. Defend. Depose.” has entered the national vocabulary—through tragedy, through anger, and through recognition.

Ivy Griffith’s reporting confirms what many of us have lived firsthand:

The phrase is not random.

The phrase has a history.

The phrase is being read, understood, and repeated—because it names something real.

Echoes of Feinman. Echoes of the System. As Griffith notes, the phrase echoes legal scholar Jay M. Feinman’s seminal book: Delay. Deny. Defend. — a definitive analysis of how insurers systematically obstruct policyholders.

The alleged shooter’s altered phrasing—“Deny. Defend. Depose.”—tightens that formula into a courtroom escalation strategy. It exposes how the industry transforms suffering into policy—and policy into a wall no ordinary person can scale.

Protest or Warning? While the attack has rightly been condemned, the presence of these words at the crime scene has opened a dangerous question: Was this simply a slogan—or a verdict?

Griffith quotes both fear and fascination. While New York officials worked to assure the public this was a “targeted attack,” the phrase itself sparked broader dread—not just of more violence, but of what the words reflect.

“Deny. Defend. Depose.” has now crossed from litigation strategy to cultural symbol. And no one—not UnitedHealthcare, not law enforcement, not the public—can claim it’s unfamiliar.

📎 Preserved Copy: Distractify, Ivy Griffith — “Deny, Defend, Depose” Bullets Found in UnitedHealthcare Shooting (Dec. 5, 2024)

📖 Original Article: https://www.distractify.com/p/deny-defend-depose-meaning-unitedhealthcare

🧷 “Deny. Defend. Depose.” – When Legal Language Becomes Public Resistance

On May 19, 2025, writer Charles Dickens published an article titled “Deny Defend Depose Meaning: From Legal Tactic to Cultural Flashpoint”, capturing one of the most important linguistic and political shifts in recent memory.

The phrase “Deny. Defend. Depose.”—once known only to insurance litigators and corporate risk teams—has exploded into the public consciousness. It’s been scrawled across protest signs, graffitied on hospital walls, printed in headlines, and now, tragically, found engraved on the shell casings from the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Dickens doesn’t glorify what happened. He analyzes it. And in doing so, he confirms what many of us already knew:

This wasn’t a phrase invented by extremists. It was a phrase used by corporations. A legal strategy that became a symbol—because of how deeply it was felt.

⚖️ The Original Meaning: Deny. Defend. Depose. As Dickens explains, the phrase emerged from inside the insurance and legal industries, referring to a now-common 3-step litigation strategy:

Deny the initial claim

Defend the decision if challenged

Depose the claimant in court to undermine their credibility

This strategy wasn’t illegal. It was institutional. And over time, it became routine—particularly in health insurance, disability claims, auto injuries, and Medicaid appeals.

What began as risk control evolved into a system of procedural exhaustion: stall the claimant, bury them in paperwork, escalate when they fight back.

Dickens writes:

“Though it may sound harsh, this three-step approach was historically designed to protect against fraudulent claims... But in practice, especially when overused, it has often been accused of prioritizing profit over people.”

🚨 From Legal Tactic to Cultural Flashpoint Dickens captures how the phrase made its leap from courtrooms to culture. He notes that the Mangione shooting—while horrifying—did not invent this language. It revealed how recognizable the phrase had already become.

“The phrase on the bullet casings—deny, defend, depose—wasn’t random. It was a message, a grim commentary on perceived institutional neglect.”

This line matters. Because it echoes what so many survivors of insurance denial already know: the violence often begins long before physical harm. It begins in the delay. In the silence. In the algorithm. In the denial letter.

🧠 Why the Phrase Resonates So Deeply According to Dickens, the phrase has taken off because it captures something too many people have lived:

Being denied a critical medication

Being forced into legal battles just to survive

Being treated as an adversary by the very system that promised to care

Across social media and public art, “Deny. Defend. Depose.” has become a rallying cry—and sometimes, a warning. Dickens points out its dual identity:

“It has become both a warning and a war cry—depending on who’s wielding it.”

That duality is the cultural tension we now live inside. And it's precisely what UnitedHealthcare refused to acknowledge when they escalated my call to law enforcement.

🛑 My Use of the Phrase Wasn't Isolated. It Was Inevitable. When I said “Deny. Defend. Depose.” on a recorded call with UnitedHealthcare, it wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t new. And it wasn’t mine alone.

It was already:

Being analyzed by legal scholars

Quoted by journalists like Trudy Lieberman

Studied by critics of managed care

Echoed in patient forums and disability hearings

What Charles Dickens makes clear is this:

The phrase didn’t become dangerous because I used it. It became dangerous because the public recognized it as true.

⚖️ Legal Strategy or Systemic Abuse? Dickens closes with a question that haunts the entire health care and legal system today:

“Should legal strategy ever override human need?”

It’s the right question. Because this isn’t about slogans. It’s about outcomes. And it’s about lives.

📎 Preserved Copy: “Deny Defend Depose Meaning: From Legal Tactic to Cultural Flashpoint” by Charles Dickens, Café Lam (May 19, 2025)

📖 Original Source: https://cafelam.co.uk/deny-defend-depose-meaning/

🧷 “Deny. Defend. Depose.” — The System Gave It Meaning

On January 10, 2025, award-winning health care journalist Trudy Lieberman published a piece titled “Deny. Defend. Depose: The Chilling Legacy of Managed Care and the American Health Care Crisis”.

In it, she traces the phrase not to violence—but to decades of documented corporate behavior in the American health insurance industry.

“Paying less for care meant more profits and return to investors, so it is no wonder that the alleged killer of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive reportedly left the chilling message: ‘DENY. DEFEND. DEPOSE,’ words associated with insurance company strategies for denying claims.”

Lieberman names what the public already knew: “Deny. Defend. Depose.” is industry-standard conduct—not extremism.

It didn’t come from fringe rhetoric. It came from the managed care model itself, born in the 1990s, refined through mergers, and enforced through denial algorithms and profit-based care limits.

For decades, patients have described the same pattern:

First, deny the claim.

Then, defend the denial.

Finally, depose the patient—through paperwork, delay, appeals, or silence.

The phrase has lived in the public domain longer than UnitedHealthcare would like to admit.

This Isn’t About a Slogan. It’s About a Pattern. Lieberman’s reporting confirms what whistleblowers, case managers, and patients have all described—what I named, and what UnitedHealthcare tried to criminalize.

“Deny. Defend. Depose.” is not a threat. It’s a policy.

📎 Read the full article by Trudy Lieberman: Click Here

📎 Preserved Copy: A PDF archive of “Deny. Defend. Depose: The Chilling Legacy of Managed Care and the American Health Care Crisis” by Trudy Lieberman (January 10, 2025) is preserved and available HERE for public reference and evidentiary purposes.

🧷 When I said “Deny. Defend. Depose.” on the phone with UnitedHealthcare, I wasn’t threatening anyone—I was speaking a truth that made them uncomfortable.

That phrase wasn’t invented by me. It’s already embedded in legal, academic, and cultural conversations about how corporations dodge accountability. It names a real pattern. And I was far from the only one who saw it.

In December 2024, a sharp and controversial article titled “Deny. Defend. Depose: A New Model of Corporate Accountability?” was published on the Peter A. Allard School of Law Blog by a contributor using the name lukaszk. It reflected on the public reaction to the assassination of UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson, and examined why so many people saw his death not as tragedy—but as retribution.

“The words engraved on Mangione’s bullets were about legal procedure and are related to how insurance companies weaponize legal procedure against vulnerable people.”

That article didn’t glorify violence. It interrogated why those words—legal, procedural, bureaucratic—were seen as justifiable targets for outrage. It recognized that for many marginalized people, corporate abuse doesn’t look like a villain in a cape. It looks like a denial letter, a phone tree, an escalation team. A system designed to delay until you break.

That article remains live. But another one does not.

A second piece—attributed to law student Serena Kaul—was also published on the Allard Blog in 2024 under the same title: “Deny. Defend. Depose.” That one is now gone. Removed without explanation.

Kaul’s version wasn’t about vigilante justice—it was about legal architecture. She dissected the phrase as a symptom of deeper systemic failure: how administrative actors use procedure to silence dissent, punish the vulnerable, and make civil rights technically compliant but functionally unreachable. Her analysis warned that institutional actors might one day try to criminalize protest language under the guise of public safety.

Her piece was less visceral, more academic—but no less dangerous to those in power.

It’s no coincidence that her article was taken down. We’re working to recover and preserve a copy for public record.

🔥 UnitedHealthcare Didn’t Misunderstand Me. They Recognized the Pattern. I used the phrase Deny. Defend. Depose. not on a weapon. Not in rage. But on a phone call—while trying to survive.

I used it:

After my hormone therapy was illegally denied

After two weeks of delay and misdirection

While pleading—lawfully—for the medication that Colorado state law required them to cover

UnitedHealthcare didn’t treat my speech as policy critique. They treated it as a threat.

They stripped it of context. They reframed it as “instability.” And they sent my audio, gender status, psychiatric medications, and call transcripts to the Grand Junction Police Department— without a subpoena, without redaction, and without lawful justification.

But as the Allard blog post and Kaul’s removed article made clear:

This wasn’t just my language. It was the language of protest. The language of systems being named. The language of people who have had enough.

We will update this page with a link to the preserved Kaul article if and when it becomes available. Until then, remember:

My words weren’t dangerous. What’s dangerous is a system that treats truth as threat.