Hey there. Last month, I saw a wild tweet from a doctor in New York, and lots of other people

saw it do. It made the rounds. It said that Optum, a subsidiary of United Health Group,

better known for running the big insurance company United Healthcare, quote,

is now running a payday loan business targeting medical practices." This doctor wrote that

United denies and delays payments to docs. In other words, hurting their cash flow,

making them targets for a payday loan business. And one thing checked out right away,

Optum is offering loans to doctors and other providers at interest, and the pitch is cash flow.

Optum pay advance is filled for healthcare organizations like yours.

We've developed a customized cash flow solution that gives easy and fast access to funds.

The website gives an example where a $100 loan means $65 to you up front,

and then keeping $35. The doc who tweeted it called the idea,

genius exclamation point. You know, genius like evil genius. I mean, it sounded like my boss

telling me, hey Dan, payday's friday, and I got some bad news and some good news. The bad news is

I'm not going to pay your friday. I'm going to do a deep dive on your time sheet. I may ask you

for a bunch of supporting paperwork. Honestly, I don't know how long it'll take or how much

I'm actually going to pay you. So, you know, that's the bad news. The good news is I confront you

some of the money. I'll just take it out of any future paychecks plus a little something for my

trouble. See, 35%. I talked with the doctor who posted the tweet, Alex Steinslager,

a urologist in New York. So that's an incredible business plan. You have to be really creative

to come up with that business idea. You also have to have steel bowls to actually propose that

publicly. I mean, you have to not have any moral compass at all. Now, having looked into it,

I got to say, it may not be exactly that simple. United Health Group operates a huge web of

...