Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
A podcast at the intersection of psychology and culture that intimately explores the human experience and critiques the counseling profession. Your host, Stephanie Winn, distills wisdom gained from her practice as a family therapist and coach while pivoting towards questions of how to apply a practical understanding of psychology to the novel dilemmas of the 21st century, from political polarization to medical malpractice.
What does ethical mental health care look like in a normless age, as our moral compasses spin in search of true north? How can therapists treat patients under pressure to affirm everything from the notion of "gender identity" to assisted suicide?
Primarily a long-form interview podcast, Stephanie invites unorthodox, free-thinking guests from many walks of life, including counselors, social workers, medical professionals, writers, researchers, and people with unique lived experience, such as detransitioners.
Curious about many things, Stephanie’s interdisciplinary psychological lens investigates challenging social issues and inspires transformation in the self, relationships, and society. She is known for bringing calm warmth to painful subjects, and astute perceptiveness to ethically complex issues. Pick up a torch to illuminate the dark night and join us on this journey through the inner wilderness.
You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist ranks in the top 1% globally according to ListenNotes. New episodes are released every Monday. Three and a half years after the show's inception in May of 2022, Stephanie became a Christian, representing the crystallization of moral, spiritual, and existential views she had been openly grappling with along with her audience and guests. Newer episodes (#188 forward) may sometimes reflect a Christian understanding, interwoven with and applied to the same issues the podcast has always addressed. The podcast remains diverse and continues to feature guests from all viewpoints.
191. Eithan Haim
===
[00:00:00] Eithan: The American Medical Association recommendation is that gender affirming top surgery no longer be coded using the CPT code for a mastectomy. Instead, it's breast reduction. That's a big difference because number one, those are two immensely [00:00:15] different surgeries. One is a reduction in breast tissue with a preservation of function.
[00:00:20] Eithan: The other is a loss of breast tissue. With the removal of function, two complete different surgeries, mastectomies are typically more difficult to get covered. You can really only do 'em for a breast cancer [00:00:30] diagnosis, so to get a mastectomy covered for gender affirming services, very difficult for private insurance, but for breast reduction, it's a whole different story.
[00:00:38] Eithan: Easier to get covered because you don't need a cancer diagnosis. So what doctors can do is submit a [00:00:45] diagnosis code for, let's say, breast related pain or a breast hypertrophy so they can change the sex of the patient in the medical chart from female to male. They can submit the diagnosis code of breast hypertrophy, and then they can use the CPT code for [00:01:00] breast reduction.
[00:01:00] Eithan: They can submit that to the insurance company. The insurance company thinks that what they're covering is a male who has pathological breast hypertrophy and therefore the surgeon's doing a breast reduction. Sounds reasonable. When in actuality what's happening is you [00:01:15] have a female who's getting a mastectomy because they believe they're the opposite sex, completely fraudulent, completely criminal, but something I believe is happening.
[00:01:23] Eithan: You must be some kind of therapist
[00:01:29] Stephanie: today. My [00:01:30] guest is Dr. Aan Heim. He's a general and trauma surgeon in a small town outside of Dallas, Texas. You may recognize him as the initially anonymous whistleblower on Texas Children's Hospital in 2023. When with the help of Christopher [00:01:45] Ruffo, he drew national attention to the Children's Hospital's Secret Child Transitioning Program.
[00:01:51] Stephanie: Because of this, he was targeted by the Biden Department of Justice who sent federal agents to arrest him in his home. On the day of his graduation from [00:02:00] surgical training, Dr. Heim and his wife, a lawyer drained their life savings to defend him against bogus allegations of violating hipaa. In the process of blowing the whistle, after facing the prospect of up to 10 years in prison, [00:02:15] Dr.
[00:02:15] Stephanie: Heim was ultimately successful and is now in practice as a surgeon and continuing to raise awareness about the ethical issues with pediatric sex trait modification. Dr. Aton Heim. So good to see you. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:02:27] Eithan: Yeah. Thank you for having me on.
[00:02:29] Stephanie: I [00:02:30] really enjoyed meeting you at the Gen SPECT conference.
[00:02:32] Stephanie: It was one of the highlights as, as soon as I showed up I was, I was worried that I was gonna have social anxiety, but you were one of the first people I ran into, and you just have such this joyful, youthful energy about you.
[00:02:42] Eithan: Oh, thank you. That's awesome. Yeah, it was great. I, [00:02:45] you know, it was, it was cool meeting, you know, so many people you kind of see doing work, um, you know, online and like, you know, their writing and to me in person is a very cool thing.
[00:02:54] Stephanie: Yeah, it's like going from two dimensions to three dimensions.
[00:02:58] Eithan: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. [00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Stephanie: And uh, the talk that you gave at Gens SPECT was brilliant. And that's the subject I wanna dive into today. So for listeners who aren't familiar with Dr. Heim's story, he's told it on several podcasts. I'd highly recommend familiarizing yourself because it is an absolutely crazy [00:03:15] story that I just tried to summarize very briefly in the intro.
[00:03:18] Stephanie: The good news is that he is here now, um, that he's not in prison. He is actually able to practice medicine, and he's exactly the kind of person you want practicing medicine because he has [00:03:30] such a good moral compass. Um, but now that you are finally through that nightmare trial by fire, whatever that was, um, and free and clear, you're able to go on Dr.
[00:03:43] Stephanie: Hyman, share this incredibly [00:03:45] important information with the public. So today we're going to talk about insurance fraud. And not just insurance. 'cause there's, there's private pay stuff going on too. But insurance is a big part, I think, of, um, how these [00:04:00] unethical providers and institutions are getting away with, uh, pediatric sex trait modification.
[00:04:06] Stephanie: Thank you so much for your work on this issue.
[00:04:08] Eithan: Yeah, of course. And you know, it's, it's fascinating because, you know, for the past four years, you know, from, [00:04:15] really from 2020 to 2024, the debate had been about the legitimacy of this practice on a scientific level. And I would say that we have definitively won that battle of minds.
[00:04:28] Eithan: You know, during the last election, it was [00:04:30] like an 80 20 issue to convince people, um, you know, that this was wrong. All you really had to do was talk about what they were doing and then the evidence that they were using to support it. So the HHS report from May, [00:04:45] um. 2025. Uh, the treatment of pediatric gender dysphoria really laid the groundwork.
[00:04:51] Eithan: You know, it's the most comprehensive review of the fraudulent evidence they used and the, uh, uh, [00:05:00] contrived consensus they built among professional health organizations. But there's an even deeper subject beneath the surface, right? All of that was really bad, really, really bad what they [00:05:15] did. But now what we're uncovering is that not only did they use fraudulent evidence to perpetuate these interventions on children, but they fraudulently build insurance companies, uh, private insurance, but [00:05:30] then also public insurance.
[00:05:32] Eithan: And when you think about it, it makes sense as why they would do this, because I. When you think about medical coding, you have to think about it in the simplest way possible because it [00:05:45] seems really complicated, but it's really not. Whenever a doctor does something, they have to translate to an insurance company, to things, what they do and why they do it, what they do as a treatment, why they do it is a diagnosis.[00:06:00]
[00:06:00] Eithan: And the way that doctors and insurance companies communicate, because we speak two different languages, doctors have this highly complex language of medicine. Insurance companies have this highly complex language of insurance, but we meet in the middle by using [00:06:15] billing codes in order to communicate what we do to insurance companies.
[00:06:19] Eithan: So you have, uh, these, you know, each diagnosis, each treatment is related to a number. So, for example, you know, I just did a bowel [00:06:30] resection, you know, remove someone's bowel and then, um, put it back together. So. That's a CPT code. CPT stands for current procedural terminology. Then I have to use a diagnosis, uh, uh, international [00:06:45] classification of diseases, uh, which is the diagnosis codes.
[00:06:48] Eithan: If the treatment is justified for the diagnosis, then the insurance will cover it, right? Like, um, uh, appendicitis is a diagnosis. Appendectomy [00:07:00] is the, um, treatment. But in these gender clinics, this was a problem in ICD 10, which is a current diagnosis system used in the United States, gender identity disorder is [00:07:15] classified as a mental health disorder, but the interventions proposed.
[00:07:23] Eithan: Gender affirming care are very powerful biological interventions. [00:07:30] So there's this natural mismatch between the treatments and the diagnoses, right? You have a mental health diagnosis and then essentially chemotherapy drugs that they're giving to children for insurance to cover these very [00:07:45] powerful, strong interventions.
[00:07:47] Eithan: There's a lot of barriers to overcoming that, right? Like when, when wpath, when the Endocrine Society a MA, when American Academy of Pediatrics, they always talk about overcoming barrier barriers, [00:08:00] insurance coverage, this is what they're talking about. So. About like a year and a half ago, I started discovering these really weird patterns, very weird patterns in the billing practices that Detransition were highlighting.
[00:08:14] Eithan: And [00:08:15] they didn't know it at the time, but like I would see these documents online and I would see these diagnosis codes and instead of gender identity disorder that ICD code, which is F 64.0, I would see a diagnosis [00:08:30] code like endocrine disorder unspecified, E 34.9. And I thought to myself, how could that be?
[00:08:37] Eithan: What's the reason for that? And I mean, it took me a long time to really figure it out, but in order for [00:08:45] these gender clinics to get insurance, both public and private, to cover the hormones and the blockers for these children and also adults, they had to falsify the diagnosis codes in [00:09:00] order to get insurance to cover the payments because the insurance companies were providing too much pushback on covering the hormones and blockers under the gender identity disorder diagnosis.
[00:09:13] Eithan: And it's one of those things where it's like, [00:09:15] you know, like a very prevalent practice. Is it not that prevalent? How much fraud is there? So two things before I, I'll stop and you know, let you ask questions, but there was a study from the University of Iowa [00:09:30] that looked at a couple thousand patients in their general clinic and all the patients who had gender identity disorder.
[00:09:38] Eithan: 95% of those patients also had the concomitant diagnosis of endocrine [00:09:45] disorder unspecified, 95%. Why would these patients have an endocrine disorder diagnosis? Unless those diagnose diagnoses were being used to bill insurance companies? Because when the insurance, what they see [00:10:00] is the age of the patient, the primary diagnosis, and then the intervention being prescribed.
[00:10:06] Eithan: That's all three pieces of information because they can't understand anything else. When they see endocrine disorder [00:10:15] unspecified, what they think is, oh, this patient must have some genetic abnormality, right? Some tumor that is secreting hormones, and because of that, they need. These other hormones to counteract in endocrine disorder [00:10:30] unspecified is, has a very clear diagnostic criteria that, um, uh, is confirmed by biochemical testing.
[00:10:39] Eithan: You know, this is used in a very specific number of disorders. So [00:10:45] 95% of those patients at the University of Iowa General Clinic had a diagnosis of gender identity disorder unspecified. But I can also tell you that I've reviewed the records of a few detransition and what I've seen is that almost [00:11:00] every single diagnosis, uh, and intervention that's prescribed is based on the fraudulent billing code over the course of years.
[00:11:10] Stephanie: This is a really huge piece of the puzzle, and I'm thankful that you're [00:11:15] explaining it so clearly and succinctly. This has a bridge to the mental health industry. A lot of our listeners are therapists and then a lot of our listeners who aren't therapists are concerned, parents who wanna know exactly what's going on [00:11:30] that might bring harm to their children.
[00:11:31] Stephanie: So this is a sort of thing where the parents, they can perk up because this is potentially something where you could identify the harm that that providers are doing illegally to your child and what precisely is [00:11:45] illegal about it. And for the therapist in the audience, I'm just gonna make this more relatable.
[00:11:49] Stephanie: So you explained CPT codes and ICD codes and I worked in settings as a therapist where I was billing those codes. And so, um, [00:12:00] for example, um, an ICD code that we might use in therapy would be F 41.1, generalized anxiety disorder. And then we also have these, um. Unspecified categories that you can [00:12:15] attach to things when something doesn't quite meet the clinical presentation.
[00:12:18] Stephanie: So these codes are all in the diagnostic and statistical manual for therapists, but then they have, uh, they're also in the ICD so that it can work with the insurance system. And there's [00:12:30] something in there that we might get into about the American Medical Association and their role with, uh, those, um, ICD, is it ICD or CPT, that they have a role CT code?
[00:12:42] Stephanie: Yep. Okay. Um, so then for [00:12:45] example, like 9 0 8 3 7 would be a 55 minute therapy session, and it would be considered normal for the insurance industry to receive therapist billing, let's say for one weekly hour of [00:13:00] psychotherapy for generalized anxiety disorder. But if someone had an, a anxiety diagnosis and then, uh, a.
[00:13:07] Stephanie: The therapist was trying to bill for residential treatment, the insurance company might go, wait a minute. Um, people with anxiety don't usually go to [00:13:15] residential. They go to residential for like a severe addiction problem or you know, a personality disorder with a suicide attempt. Like, what's, you know, what's going on here?
[00:13:25] Stephanie: So as a therapist, that was my experience of learning how this stuff worked and kind of its [00:13:30] connection to the medical industry. And this is also one of those things that raised my own heckles about this issue, thinking, well wait a minute, if gender dysphoria is a psychological problem and normally what we do for psychological problems, our psychological [00:13:45] solutions, why does this out of all conditions warrant medical intervention?
[00:13:51] Stephanie: And then the more I started to learn, now this is, you know, going back five years or so, but the more I started to learn about the medical interventions, you realize that the interventions are creating illness [00:14:00] where there was none. And so that's part of where it doesn't add up at all is because normally when, um.
[00:14:07] Stephanie: A treatment is considered the standard of care for a condition. That's because there's evidence that the treatment makes the [00:14:15] condition better. And so here's where we get into the problem, because with what you're describing, it's flipped. It's actually that people who did not have endocrine disorders were falsely labeled as having endocrine [00:14:30] disorders to justify billing for these, uh, you know, whether it be puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, testosterone blockers, things like that, billing for those things, which then induced endocrine disorders.
[00:14:42] Stephanie: So the diagnosis becomes correct. It's [00:14:45] like this medical munchausens thing going on.
[00:14:48] Eithan: Yeah. The, the only endo endocrine disorder those patients had were the ones being given to them by their doctors. And even those, the iatrogenic endocrine [00:15:00] disorder wouldn't classify under E 34.9, which is. What they were coding in many of these cases.
[00:15:06] Eithan: But a good analogy to the world of therapy is like if you had a patient with like generalized anxiety disorder, which I'm sure you know is [00:15:15] reimbursed based on a cer, you know, a certain amount of value, right? Let's say a hundred dollars for a session, but you saw 10 generalized anxiety disorder in a day, but you upcoded each one to like inpatient suicidal attempts, schizophrenia [00:15:30] to upcode it to like $500 a day and, and you wanna do this because you wanted.
[00:15:35] Eithan: To get yourself paid, right? It's like that, but even worse because you're actually creating disease in patients who didn't otherwise have it.
[00:15:44] Stephanie: [00:15:45] And explain that part because I, I understand like for example, I'm trying to follow the analogy. There's this thing called an interactive complexity add-on that you can add if a session went over because of really heightened family dynamics or something like that.
[00:15:59] Stephanie: But [00:16:00] you'll get like $7 for it and it's usually not suitable. So most therapists don't even bother with that sort of thing. But with what you're describing, are you saying that with a fraudulent billing practices that you have investigated that one of the [00:16:15] purposes they serve is to greatly increase the revenue?
[00:16:18] Eithan: Well, there is no revenue without the fraudulent billing codes. That's the thing, right? There's Well, there's
[00:16:24] Stephanie: no treatment that, yeah. Insurance would cover.
[00:16:28] Eithan: Exactly. Yeah. If you don't [00:16:30] have insurance paying for the interventions, the hormones, blockers, then you don't have a gender clinic, and the only way to maintain the payments is through fraudulent billing codes.
[00:16:44] Eithan: Then yeah, [00:16:45] then it's, it would be like using completely false diagnosis codes to maintain the solvency of a clinic when it wouldn't be maintained otherwise. Because why else would, 95% of patients at the University of Iowa have endocrine disorder [00:17:00] unspecified, and it's this code that is used to ensure the reimbursement for hormones, but not only hormones and blockers, but the laboratory testing, the imaging testing, and the clinic [00:17:15] visits.
[00:17:15] Eithan: All that adds up. Per patient to an enormous, enormous amount of money for a diagnosis that simply does not exist. And it's hard for people to, to really wrap their head around that 'cause it's such a wild [00:17:30] claim. But it's true. I've seen it.
[00:17:33] Stephanie: Lemme clarify this. So 95% of these patients had this fraudulent diagnosis or a diagnosis is only valid if you consider it because it's at iatrogenic.
[00:17:44] Stephanie: And you said even then [00:17:45] they still wouldn't qualify. But what's, would you say that the other 5%, um, is our best explanation for that, that their, that cash pay patients, well,
[00:17:54] Eithan: even, even the cash pay. So I've seen records where it's cash pay that still [00:18:00] use the false billing code because the false billing codes serve multiple purposes.
[00:18:04] Eithan: So number one, they. It's easier for insurance companies to reimburse a doctor if the ICD code, which is why the doctor does [00:18:15] something, is tied to hormones, right? Because an endocrine disorder, unspecified, that's like a pretty high level biological diagnosis, right? If you have endocrine disorder, unspecified insurance company thinks, man, this, this person has a serious endocrine [00:18:30] disorder, you know, a genetic condition or a tumor.
[00:18:33] Eithan: So they're not really gonna think twice about reimbursing the doctor for hormones. But then the other reason to possibly do it is, um, to evade state, uh, [00:18:45] legislation in red states. So you can have a gender clinic working, uh, you know, full on in like a conservative state like Tennessee, Texas, Alabama. And if the doctors are using endocrine disorder, unspecified or precocious [00:19:00] puberty, or any of these other fraudulent codes, the governing authorities.
[00:19:05] Eithan: I have no idea it's happening.
[00:19:07] Stephanie: And that's part of what you uncovered at Texas Children's Hospital?
[00:19:12] Eithan: Well, so what I uncovered was that they were doing it. [00:19:15] I had no idea about the false billing codes. And that that kind of opens up, you know, who knows what else they were doing. I have no idea. I mean, maybe I only saw a small portion of it.
[00:19:25] Eithan: I, who knows? I have no idea. I mean, I mean, now that I [00:19:30] see how prevalent this is, it's possible, you know, it, that this was way bigger than I thought. And maybe they were, you know, maybe it was they were doing other surgeries, you know, like, like, but that I couldn't confirm, so I wouldn't wanna speculate.
[00:19:43] Stephanie: I just, uh, I [00:19:45] wanna clarify something here.
[00:19:47] Stephanie: So is it the American Medical Association that sets the standards for what CPT codes are used for what ICD codes?
[00:19:58] Eithan: Um, so it can [00:20:00] have an impact. Yes. And this is where it gets really wild, where the, where the rabbit hole of corruption becomes, you know, kind of hard to believe, but for, you know, the common era, it's like kind of run in the mill corruption.
[00:20:12] Eithan: So the American Medical [00:20:15] Association is one of the oldest medical associations in the United States. In the 1960s. They had copyrighted the CPT coding system. In the 1980s, Medicare and Medicaid was passed, and [00:20:30] HHS by regulation had authorized the CPT codes to be the sole coding system used for Medicare and Medicaid.
[00:20:38] Eithan: Right. So this was established as the only treatment coding [00:20:45] system to be used in the United States in the 1980s. In the two thousands, it was reaffirmed with the introduction of electronic health records. And you know, and this is all just by. Regulation by, um, executive order from the [00:21:00] head of HHS. So what that grants, the American Medical Association is a government mandated monopoly on medical coding in the country.
[00:21:13] Eithan: So every time a [00:21:15] CPT code is entered into a medical chart, the a MA gets some type of royalty, which is why every year their annual revenue is about $500 million, which is about five times more than any other [00:21:30] organization. So the a MA, even though they've been hemorrhaging members for the last 10, 15 years, right.
[00:21:37] Eithan: Their revenue only goes up. The, the compensation for their executive leadership only goes up as [00:21:45] they get less and less members. So between the 1960s and 1990s, the majority of their, their annual revenue was membership dues. But with the, um, government mandated monopoly on CPT coding in the 1980s and then two thousands, [00:22:00] the more codes that are used, the more revenue the a MA receives, where now they've become an absolute behemoth.
[00:22:08] Eithan: So every year, the American Medical Association convenes a, uh, [00:22:15] CPT editorial panel that is composed, I think of about 20 individuals. 11 of those people are. Uh, uh, elected by professional medical associations like the a a P, [00:22:30] right, like the American College of Surgeons. But they have to be confirmed by the A MA Board of Trustees, so no one gets in there unless they're confirmed by the A MA Board of Trustees.
[00:22:39] Eithan: The other people on the CPT editorial board panel is, [00:22:45] um, representative from Blue Cross Blue Shield, uh, American Health Insurance Plan, which is like a organization and then someone from CMS and then a representative from the, uh, American Hospital Association and [00:23:00] Grant. And it's important to know that the a MA is like the seventh most powerful lobbying organization in the country, like next to like oil companies and like, you know, the other big ones.
[00:23:11] Eithan: Um, so every year they have the capacity [00:23:15] to change which CPT codes for which diagnoses like. For like gender interventions, like WPATH recommendations go from category three to CAT category [00:23:30] one. Category one CPT codes are those that are considered standard of care with well, uh, uh, uh, constructed evidence to support it, and that therefore tend to get insurance coverage.[00:23:45]
[00:23:45] Eithan: So all the CPT codes that correlate to interventions prescribed by quote unquote gender affirming care are category one codes, right, despite the fact that the HHS report has [00:24:00] decimated the evidentiary foundation of all these interventions, the CPT editorial panel's most recent meeting was September of this year, four months after the HHS report came out.
[00:24:14] Eithan: Yet [00:24:15] the CPT codes for gender affirming. Services are still category one codes, but also check, this is the crazy part, how can the CPT codes be manipulated in order to, you [00:24:30] know, uh, um, reinforce fraudulent coding practices? So in 2022, there was a bunch of insurance policies, blue Cross, blue Shield, Aetna, and then in multiple states, Oklahoma, Texas, [00:24:45] New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, California, a couple other ones.
[00:24:50] Eithan: And in these insurance policies, uh, they had included a recommendation, you know, like a change to gender affirming [00:25:00] top surgery, quote unquote. And the change was, it said very clearly the American Medical Association recommendation is that gender affirming top surgery no longer be coded using the [00:25:15] CPT code for a mastectomy.
[00:25:17] Eithan: Which is 19 3 0 1 8. Instead it's breast reduction 19 3 0 3. That's a big [00:25:30] difference because number one, those are two massive, immensely different surgeries, right? One is a reduction in breast tissue with a preservation of function. The other is a loss of breast tissue with [00:25:45] the removal of all the, the, with, with the removal of function.
[00:25:49] Eithan: And, um, so two complete different surgeries. Mastectomies are typically more difficult to get covered because I do [00:26:00] mastectomies. You typ, you, you can really only do 'em for a breast cancer diagnosis. So to get a mastectomy covered for gender affirming services, very typical for private insurance, right? But for breast reduction.
[00:26:14] Eithan: It's a whole [00:26:15] different story, much easier to get covered because you don't need a cancer diagnosis. So what doctors can do is submit an ICDA diagnosis code for, let's say, um, uh, breast, breast [00:26:30] related pain, or a breast hypertrophy so they can change the sex of the patient in the medical chart from female to male.
[00:26:39] Eithan: They can submit the diagnosis code of breast hypertrophy, and then [00:26:45] they can use a CPT code for breast reduction. They can submit that to the insurance company. The insurance company thinks that what they're covering is a male who has pathological breast hypertrophy and therefore the [00:27:00] surgeon's doing a breast reduction.
[00:27:00] Eithan: Sounds reasonable. When in actuality what's happening is you have a female who's getting a mastectomy for. Because they believe they're the opposite sex. Completely fraudulent, completely criminal. But something I believe is [00:27:15] happening. But then also it's um, uh, the reason this is also so notable, not only is because you have breast reductions and mastectomies are two profoundly different surgeries anatomically, right.[00:27:30]
[00:27:30] Eithan: But it also contradicts everything in the literature. When you read W Associate eight, the term mastectomy is used 29 times. Breast reduction is used [00:27:45] only once or twice. And it's used, you know, in reference to like non-binary people if they want like a breast reduction, right? And then the other, it's like a parenthetical, right?
[00:27:58] Eithan: So it's only twice verse 29 times. [00:28:00] Why in the world would the American Medical Association change the recommendation? For insurance companies to code gender referring top surgery is mastectomies to breast reductions [00:28:15] when the surgery they're doing is a mastectomy, but they're saying to do a breast reduction that's completely opposite what the surgeon does in the operative note.
[00:28:23] Eithan: And I've seen there online like, uh, uh, there was one recently. What the surgeon describes in the operative [00:28:30] note is a mastectomy, not a breast reduction. So my suspicion is, is that my, you know, based on well-founded evidence is that the a MA is so ideologically captured, which you [00:28:45] can see by all of their policies that they're facilitating the fraudulent coding.
[00:28:50] Eithan: Um, in general clinics, they're assisting these general clinics in getting away with it. How else would you do it? Unless you're working with the most powerful [00:29:00] insurance companies in the country, as they do in the CPT editorial panel.
[00:29:05] Stephanie: Many of you listening to this show are concerned about an adolescent or young adult you care about who's caught up in the gender insanity and therefore at risk of medical [00:29:15] self-destruction.
[00:29:15] Stephanie: I developed ROGD repair as a resource for parents just like you. It's a self-paced online course and community that will teach you the psychology concept and communication tools. The families I've consulted with have [00:29:30] found most helpful in understanding and getting through to their children even when they're adults.
[00:29:36] Stephanie: Visit r gd repair.com to learn more about the program and use promo code, some therapist 2025 at checkout [00:29:45] to take 50% off your first month. That's ROGD repair.com. Okay, this is huge. Let me see if I can highlight a few of the most important points. For one, [00:30:00] uh, the phrase you used when describing the a MA was a government mandated monopoly, and that's a very good description.
[00:30:07] Stephanie: I, I remember just learning about this in the last couple years because I remember being trained to use CPT [00:30:15] codes and ICD codes, but never stopping to ask who came up with these codes, who regulates these codes. And when I learned that the a MA had. What's the word? Some kind of proprietary thing, like a [00:30:30] trademark?
[00:30:30] Stephanie: Well, it's their copyright. Yeah. Copyright a trademark. That they had a copyright on the codes and that they were taking royalties from every transaction involving these codes. I remember feeling shocked and outraged [00:30:45] about that. Um, at the time I was a therapist in private practice, still taking insurance.
[00:30:51] Stephanie: And using CPT codes to diagnose my patients to submit for insurance reimbursement. And I'm like, wait a minute. There's, there's an organization [00:31:00] profiting off of this that that doesn't feel right. Um, and, and then down the rabbit hole we go, right, you're saying that this, this is a hugely powerful organization that's getting all the money off of these transactions and that has the power [00:31:15] to categorize them.
[00:31:16] Stephanie: So I wanna flag a question here that we'll come back to, which is the question that if they have done this arbitrary categorization and they've moved these so-called gender [00:31:30] affirming procedures, which do more harm than good into category one, why is fraud even necessary if they have that? But before we let you answer that question, 'cause you've said so much worth commenting on here, I also [00:31:45] really wanna highlight and underscore your point about the language of the breast reduction.
[00:31:50] Stephanie: Because one of the things I wanna offer our listeners here, uh, is especially the, the parents who have trans-identified, um, [00:32:00] adolescents and young adults. Because what I've noticed is that some of the fraud that's taking place in your industry is creeping into my domain, which is I help the parents with their communication.
[00:32:12] Stephanie: I help the parents understand what's going on [00:32:15] psychologically with their kids, and, and parents report things that don't make sense to them, and I help them decode them. And in that position, I've noticed this language creep where girls who want mastectomies are now saying they want breast [00:32:30] reductions.
[00:32:31] Stephanie: And what happens is the parents, uh, might feel relieved because they think, oh, she just wants a breast reduction. And, and I, in the back of my mind, I'm going, does she just want a breast reduction [00:32:45] or. Is she feeling, um, really close to the surgeon and, and taking on some of the surgeon's language because there's this like air of authority that the medical complex has with these young people where they're [00:33:00] like transferring their attachment to their parents onto the surgeons and the therapists who are affirming them.
[00:33:05] Stephanie: And then it's like, oh no, but that's what they say, right? So I'm thinking, no, your daughter's clinging on to the [00:33:15] framework that these, uh, fraudulent billing surgeons and medical professionals are using. So I want parents to be aware that you will hear your kids saying things like breast reduction. Um, you'll hear kids, this is another thing I'm [00:33:30] inviting you to comment on at some point, talking about how they think that their intersex, when they don't, there's no reason to believe that they have any kind of disorder of sexual development.
[00:33:42] Stephanie: So I just wanted to flag that for the [00:33:45] parents in our audience before we go on. And thank you for, for letting me, and
[00:33:50] Eithan: you know, it's, um, so you make a good point, right? Where you feel like there's this language creep where people are saying things like they're almost being coached [00:34:00] to say it, right?
[00:34:01] Stephanie: Yeah.
[00:34:02] Eithan: It's, the reason I say it's funny you say that is because there is a resource guide, which was put out there by an organization called The Campaign for Southern Equality, some radical transgender organization. [00:34:15] So this was, um, uh, the title of it was Insurance Coding, you know, uh, gender Affirming Care Alternative Diagnosis Codes, right?
[00:34:25] Eithan: And that's kinda a weird, weird name, alternative diagnosis Codes, because really it's like [00:34:30] there's only. You diagnose someone with what they have, you shouldn't be using alternative diagnosis codes, right? That's red flag number one. But in the, in the intro, it um, advises for patients to be, [00:34:45] um, you know, to advocate for themselves to be familiar with these diagnosis codes so they can work with their doctor in order to get insur certain insurance to cover the surgeries, hormones and blockers.
[00:34:58] Eithan: And then what they [00:35:00] provide in the table in this resource guide is codes that tend to get denied, which is gender identity disorder, F 64. It says these codes tend to get denied, and then it says codes that tend to get [00:35:15] approved. And then one of those is, um, endocrine disorder unspecified. Another is breast hypertrophy, and then the corresponding procedure is breast reduction.
[00:35:27] Eithan: Right? So. The [00:35:30] reason you're probably seeing this is because it exists is that there are resources out there. All these counselors know that they have to, to, to teach these kids how to [00:35:45] talk to their doctors in order to get both of them on the same page. Like, oh, I'm gonna tell the surgeon the right thing so that they enter the right diagnosis and then do the correct treatment so that insurance will cover it.
[00:35:59] Eithan: [00:36:00] Thinking one thing when it's actually totally different. So it's essentially a. An online guide for how to fraudulent bill insurance. And that's what I said because I brought this guide up during, uh, oversight [00:36:15] hearing in April of this year with a Texas Congressman Brandon Gill. It was about my case. It was, uh, during a hearing about my case.
[00:36:22] Eithan: And he brought up like a picture of it and we talked about it. And then what happened A few days later, the Campaign for Southern Quality [00:36:30] asked that resource guide from the web, from their website, they took it down after I said, it's analogous to online meth cooking guide. Right? It's like, how to commit medical fraud.
[00:36:43] Eithan: How to commit felonies. Mm-hmm. [00:36:45] So they took it down right after understanding that people were onto their grift and um. Yeah, so this is like a, like a, people go to prison for this. This is like a, like you go to like white collar prison, I mean this, and you can't wiggle [00:37:00] out of it like they do about the guidelines where it's like, oh, you know, it's a matter of expert.
[00:37:04] Eithan: No, like if you build an insurance company for a false diagnosis, like that's. That's fraud. That's a big problem. Let's,
[00:37:10] Stephanie: let's also highlight that part that you mentioned about, um, people's [00:37:15] sex being falsified in their medical record. Oh yeah. 'cause this is the narrative, right? The narrative is no, I'm a male trapped in a female body, or vice versa.
[00:37:23] Stephanie: And so with the language of breast hypertrophy, I'm not sure how that's different from the term I'm [00:37:30] familiar with, which would be gynecomastia in males, same thing. Right? Okay. So same thing, right? So there's obviously a huge difference between a male with gynecomastia and a female who's unhappy with her breasts.
[00:37:42] Stephanie: But, um, if, if a [00:37:45] woman thinks of her breasts as male gynecomastia and is able to get her doctors to think of it that way, and then that's what the medical record reflex, that's, that's one thing. And what we also hear of, um, we hear of, I [00:38:00] saw a clip just today, uh, the trans identified male saying that he has PCOS.
[00:38:06] Stephanie: That he has abnormally high androgen levels. Yeah. Well, the reality is you have androgen levels because you're a male and your body is meant [00:38:15] to produce androgens, whereas you're actually by claiming that label mocking women with a real condition that affects their quality of life. But this is how the patients are thinking of themselves and it's how the doctors are billing for it.
[00:38:29] Stephanie: And, [00:38:30] and then some of the ideas are creeping into the ways that they talk with that the kids and the doctors talk to the parents. So as a parent, you may need to clarify. Now, I, I'm not gonna advise in the scope of this [00:38:45] podcast on how to communicate, 'cause all my advice on how to communicate is in my course.
[00:38:49] Stephanie: But using those communication tools, you might need to try to get some clarity. Does your kid really. Think or has he or she convinced themself at this point in time? No, I really [00:39:00] am, uh, trapped in the wrong body. 'cause some of these kids don't quite think that way. They think, no, I know I'm female. I just think I would feel better if the world saw me as male, which is its own thing to unpack.
[00:39:11] Stephanie: But some of them have really kind of brainwashed themselves into, no, I'm trapped in the [00:39:15] wrong body, so I should be listed in the medical record as that that is the correct diagnosis for me.
[00:39:21] Eithan: And as a fact, they are listed in the medical records as the opposite sex. That's a fact. Um, so, and like [00:39:30] if there was a couple of cases brought by the Texas Attorney General's office in November of 2024 against, um, a couple doctors at UT Southwestern.
[00:39:39] Eithan: And when you read the lawsuit, right, everyone reads the headline, but the really wild [00:39:45] details are in the lawsuit itself. And what the lawsuits describe are these situations where the doctors. We're changing the sex in the medical chart, right? So from, let's say you have a female [00:40:00] and then you change it in the chart to male, then they would send, they, they would use the ICD code, the diagnosis code for testosterone deficiency, and then the CPT code treatment code for testosterone [00:40:15] supplementation.
[00:40:15] Eithan: So what the insurance company sees is male testosterone deficiency, testosterone supplementation, no red flags there. Makes total sense, right? When in actuality what's happening is it's a girl's [00:40:30] 16-year-old girl who is perfectly healthy and is receiving monster doses of testosterone to destroy their physiology and, and there's, there's.
[00:40:42] Eithan: I mean, a lot of, they, they, uh, of course these are [00:40:45] only allegations. It still has to go through the process. But, you know, I would, these are very, very specific allegations that, you know, it's my belief that they're probably true, um, just based off what I've seen with other detransition. But, [00:41:00] um, uh, if, if, when you think about, you know, over the past 10 years, the importance of the trans lobby, one thing they put a lot of effort into is integrating something [00:41:15] called SOGI data into EMR systems.
[00:41:18] Eithan: So, G Data is SOGI, sexual orientation, gender identity, right? They would integrate sogi data into the most [00:41:30] important demographic information in the medical chart. So like, whenever you open up a chart. In the upper left hand corner is like the important demographic information, age, sex, their birthday, where they live, insurance, things like [00:41:45] that.
[00:41:45] Eithan: But they began integrating the Sogi data in there. And the reason for, for doing that is because if you change the sex of the patient, right? That's the information that gets sent to the [00:42:00] insurance company. Also, they started integrating these, um, modifiers. Kinda like what you mentioned before, if an insurance company denies a claim for quote unquote gender affirming care, the doctors [00:42:15] can add something called a KX modifier, which can, it's like a, like a stop gap for the insurance company that, oh, I include this modifier.
[00:42:24] Eithan: You have to ignore any discrepancy between the sex of the patient [00:42:30] and then the intervention. Um. I'm billing for. So for example, if it's a male who's in the medical chart and you're coding for a pelvic exam, like a cervical exam, if you add a KX modifier, you [00:42:45] eliminate that disparity between sex and then the pap smear.
[00:42:48] Eithan: 'cause it makes no logical sense. And, and so it's like a well-known thing if there's a bunch of documentation on that online about the use of the KX modifier in order to, um, [00:43:00] bypass insurance restrictions on, um, you know, like incongruent like sex procedures. If that makes no sense.
[00:43:08] Stephanie: It's just mind boggling.
[00:43:10] Stephanie: I mean, the whole transgender ideology phenomenon, there [00:43:15] are so many instances of blatant lying and manipulation. Like I was interviewed as a guest on a podcast and I wanna actually thank Paige Harriman. She did a great job of having me her on her show. I don't know anything. And part of what I so [00:43:30] appreciated is that she is one of these people who's kind of undecided on this issue.
[00:43:35] Stephanie: She is, I guess you could say like kind of middle of the road libertarian views and asked me a lot of questions from a devil's advocate perspective, which I appreciated. [00:43:45] Um, and one of the questions she was asking me is like, what's wrong with lying? We all lie, you know, we lie about things all the time.
[00:43:52] Stephanie: And I was saying, but in normal relationships. If someone lies to you, you can tell them how that's eroded your trust [00:44:00] and it's going to affect the relationship. Whereas this is a belief system that says, no, I should be able to lie to people and it shouldn't cost my relationships with them anything, and I should have no remorse about this deception.
[00:44:12] Stephanie: So there's just so much lying and deception and it, [00:44:15] it trickles into every area. It's just so, um, pathological. I, I do have to ask you though, um, I flagged this for earlier because I'm hanging on your every word and you're saying a lot and for everything you say, I'm like, oh, there's five different points I wanna dig into.[00:44:30]
[00:44:30] Stephanie: I have to ask if the a MA is so corrupt and so captured and so wealthy and has such a monopoly and they determine the category of the codes, they have the power to [00:44:45] say that these, um, life shortening drugs and surgeries. Should be considered, the standard of care should be placed in category one for the gender dysphoria [00:45:00] diagnosis.
[00:45:00] Stephanie: They have the power to do that.
[00:45:01] Eithan: They, they do and they have, um, on. It's, it's, uh, for the past decade, um, policy after policy after policy stating that quote, unquote, gender affirming [00:45:15] care is evidence-based, um, medically necessary, right? Those two things being very important, evidence-based medically necessary.
[00:45:23] Eithan: And this is one important things about the transgender, uh, you know, laundering, um, scheme, right? Where they take [00:45:30] fraudulent evidence, they pump it into their standards of care, and then they say, oh, hey, here's evidence-based, uh, medicine, and then all the other organizations repeat it. The reason they repeat those terms, evidence-based and standard of care, is 'cause it has an impact on insurance, [00:45:45] right?
[00:45:45] Eithan: So the, the a MA, right? They, they've already made that decision. Category one standard of care, evidence-based, um, the. So they are very, very powerful, but not all powerful. And what I mean by that, and this goes [00:46:00] back to the question you flagged earlier, so what's the point of false billing codes if they're, if they're like standard of care, shouldn't insurance companies cover it?
[00:46:09] Eithan: Well, the answer is no. In certain sta it all depends on states. [00:46:15] Um, in Texas it's gonna be different than Oregon, it's gonna be different than California, as it is to New York. So based on what I've seen, the, all the, uh, records I've [00:46:30] seen in Oregon, in California, they rely on the gender identity disorder diagnosis code for hormones, blockers in surgeries, right?
[00:46:41] Eithan: In all the other states. What I've seen in Detransition [00:46:45] records is that there's a lot of fraud. Because the insurance companies won't necessarily cover those interventions. And also these states have laws that have to be circumvented. It's the [00:47:00] dual purpose of getting insurance companies in states where the insurance companies know they can't necessarily cover these interventions because there's gonna be a backlash from the people in that state.
[00:47:09] Eithan: Right. People can shoot to for other insurance plans. Right. Um, states have, [00:47:15] uh, the ability to, to regulate, you know, the practice of medicine in their own state. So these, um, although. The A MA is powerful. They're not powerful enough to overcome those barriers within the states. So [00:47:30] it serves that dual purpose.
[00:47:31] Stephanie: So conservative states are a huge thorn in their side, and this whole thing is a really big mess in this country,
[00:47:38] Eithan: big time. I mean, because it, not only were they lying about the evidence and the medical necessity, and then they [00:47:45] ended up meating and sterilizing and manipulating these, these kids and their families and destroying their entire futures and their ability to have children, but they also committed felony medical fraud to perpetuate it.
[00:47:55] Stephanie: Wow. Okay. So here's what we've covered so far. We've [00:48:00] covered what CPD. Excuse me. CPT and ICD codes are and how they're regulated by the a MA and how the a MA is at war with conservative states. And, um, and there's all this fraud going on. We have the 95% [00:48:15] prevalence of the endocrine disorder, unspecified code, and we also have sex falsification in records.
[00:48:24] Stephanie: We have this specifier that creates this loophole. [00:48:30] Um, I mean, it's just, it's, it's shocking to me every time the, the Trans Rights Movement manages to pull off one of these, like hiding in plain sight loopholes exceptions for themselves. It's just another level of shock. We've got. The categorization, the [00:48:45] breast reduction for hypertrophy.
[00:48:48] Stephanie: Um, I, I mentioned earlier, just an anecdotal example of a man self diagnosing with. PCOS, what are some other forms that this fraud can take?
[00:48:59] Eithan: [00:49:00] Yeah, so there's a couple, um, I'll, I'll start with the craziest one, which I found about two weeks ago. Oh. So there was a, a lawyer, her name is Mitra, and she is bringing a lawsuit in Massachusetts.
[00:49:12] Eithan: And her client had, uh, undergone, [00:49:15] um, vaginoplasty, you know, as they say, which is really just the creation of a wound in between the bladder and the rectum, which is meant to, to mimic a vagina, which, but it's really not. So, um, in her [00:49:30] lawsuit, she includes inner background section that her patient, her client was diagnosed with, uh, agenesis of the cervix.
[00:49:42] Eithan: So you have a male who was [00:49:45] diagnosed with agenesis of the cervix, meaning that the
[00:49:49] Stephanie: cervix, the cervix failed to generate.
[00:49:52] Eithan: Because it's a man, right? Yeah. And, and you know, she writes her lawsuit, um, uh, very appropriately that men do not have cervixes, [00:50:00] which I, I thought was, you know, you have to point that out in the lawsuit.
[00:50:03] Eithan: So, and you know, it's only in the lawsuit in that context. I'm, you know, so I don't know if that was used to, for insurance purposes. Possibly was, but you know, I wouldn't be surprised. So the [00:50:15] other forms are precocious puberty, right? Mm-hmm. Central and preco, precocious puberty in, in the Department of Justice filings, um, against big hospitals in the Northeast.
[00:50:27] Eithan: Um, you know, like, I think it's CHOP [00:50:30] and Massachusetts General, you know, the DOJ is in the battle with these hospitals to try to get the information about what diagnosis, diagnosis codes they were using and all that. So they're, they're onto this, this scheme, you know, but the issue is. [00:50:45] These hospitals are so powerful and the judges in these areas are so corrupt that for them to get the information is nearly, is, is a very, very high threshold to cross.
[00:50:56] Eithan: When in every other case of medical fraud, the hospitals would [00:51:00] be absolutely required to hand it over. Like there's no reason they should not be handing over this information because the government has the right to this information because many of these codes were billed to Medicaid. Right. And especially insurance companies too.
[00:51:13] Eithan: So the government is concerned for medical [00:51:15] fraud. These hospitals are, are required to hand over this information. But of course it's an corrupt, they're in corrupt districts. The hospitals are corrupt. Everything's corrupt. I experienced myself, it's way worse than you think. So one of the things they mention [00:51:30] in their law, in their filings is that they're, they're suspicious that many of these patients in the.
[00:51:37] Eithan: Pediatric general clinics were diagnosed with precocious central and precocious puberty, um, despite the fact that they [00:51:45] were 14, 15, 16, 17 years old. And remember, the thing that makes precocious puberty precocious is that it happens when you're seven or eight years old, right? That's what makes it precocious, right?
[00:51:58] Eithan: If you're [00:52:00] 16, that's not precocious. That's, that's puberty, you know, that's just puberty. And, um, so you, you can't diagnose a kid with precocious puberty if they're 16 years old, and then use that to justify puberty blockers. That's, [00:52:15] that's fucking crazy. You know, that's a crime. So that's one endocrine disorder, unspecified.
[00:52:22] Eithan: Then you have, um, in that, uh, uh. Information pamphlet from the campaign for Southern Inequality. Right? How do you [00:52:30] get a hysterectomy? Right? Um, fibroids, uterine fibroids, pelvic pain. There's an article from, um, it's a, a media organization associated with Kaiser where it's a, [00:52:45] you know, kind of a, a expose about, um, transgender insurance issues and it's about doctor and a patient, you know, some guy who wants to get, um, you know, laser hair removal and, you know, get all these different surgeries [00:53:00] and, uh, well, it's actually a woman.
[00:53:02] Eithan: Uh, and so how does the woman get her uterus removed? How, how does she get a hysterectomy? Well, the doctor was having all these issues with. The insurance. So what'd he end up doing? Well, [00:53:15] he just started inserting a bunch of diagnosis codes in, in there. And the one that worked was pelvic pain. And this is explicitly stated in this article that the, the doctor just landed on pelvic pain.
[00:53:25] Eithan: That's what worked. So that's what he used. Right. If that patient didn't have pelvic pain, [00:53:30] that's, that's fraud. So that's one. Um, uh, I mean, the list goes on. Um, I'm trying to think if there's any other prominent ones, but those are the, those are the big ones. Testosterone deficiency. Estrogen deficiency.
[00:53:43] Stephanie: Right. Well, and again, I mean there's this, it's, [00:53:45] it's iatrogenic. These are self-fulfilling prophecies. Women develop pelvic pain from taking testosterone. Yeah. Um, so irregular disease
[00:53:54] Eithan: is one, you know, um, so you can use,
[00:53:57] Stephanie: don't, don't get me started on the relationship [00:54:00] we as a society have with girls in their periods.
[00:54:03] Stephanie: Yeah. Um, I'm like, so anti medicalization of normal human functions. Um. What about the more cosmetic [00:54:15] aspects like males getting breast implants, like you mentioned, facial feminization, surgery, electrolysis, tracheal shave.
[00:54:22] Eithan: So those, I, I haven't, those are the procedures. The facial feminization, tracheal shave.
[00:54:29] Eithan: [00:54:30] Um, I think maybe breast augmentation are the ones that are not deemed to be category one, like medically necessary. Right. So in all the insurance policies I, I've seen tho, the [00:54:45] CPT codes corresponding to those interventions are usually classified as not medically necessary and therefore not covered by that specific insurance policy.
[00:54:57] Eithan: So I ha I haven't seen anything yet [00:55:00] about getting that covered. But you know, the one thing that, um, uh, uh. Patients can do to get those covered is they can sue their doctors in the hospitals. So if you [00:55:15] start reading a lot of the literature about, uh, from the transgender activists about insurance coverage, the one thing they advocate for, number one, is like, you know, they is knowing diagnosis codes, right?
[00:55:26] Eithan: Which is a weird thing to know about, right? Because you know, [00:55:30] which patient knows about ICD and CCPT codes. But then another thing they, they, um, uh, talk about a lot is, um, your legal capabilities in suing doctors. And there's this entire left wing transgender [00:55:45] leviathan of pro bono lawyers who will sue doctors in the hospitals and insurance companies that deny.
[00:55:52] Eithan: They're electrolysis. So there's actually a class action lawsuit. Oh, I think it's against Kaiser or another big hospital [00:56:00] system. I would have to look just to make sure. But there's a class action lawsuit against an insurance company or hospital system for them denying electrolysis or laser hair removal, or it's one of these other procedures, and that's how they intimidate insurance companies and hospitals [00:56:15] to covering the procedures.
[00:56:16] Eithan: Um, and that was based on HHS regulation 1557, which was, uh, during the Biden administration, which said you can't discriminate based on like gender identity and all that. So, um, [00:56:30] the, in that article I was just talking about too, the, the lady right su uh, she was, uh, it talked about how she sued the hospital and insurance company.
[00:56:40] Eithan: So that's one of the methods they use to, to get these [00:56:45] not medically necessary interventions covered by insurance. Which is one of the reasons why for the past couple of years likely that the insurance companies were playing along. Number one, they feared lawsuits under, you know, the rule section, you know, rule of [00:57:00] 1557 in the HHS, but then also, um, because they were all I ideologically captured too, when you look at the leadership of.
[00:57:09] Eithan: Blue Cross Blue Shield Aetna. The big insurance companies are all captured just the same as the hospitals, [00:57:15] the medical organizations, everything else.
[00:57:18] Stephanie: Are you a therapist in need of continuing education that's not over the top woke? Check out my colleague Lisa Mustard's pod courses. All of her pod courses are approved by the National Board for Certified [00:57:30] Counselors.
[00:57:30] Stephanie: Right now, Lisa is offering my listeners an incredible deal. Get all 27 POD courses. For only $44 that could meet almost all of your continuing education needs for the year. Visit lisa [00:57:45] mustard.com/pod courses and use code some therapist to take $5 off of her $49 pod course bundle. Again, use code some therapist@lisamustard.com slash pod courses.
[00:57:57] Stephanie: I'll include that link and coupon in the show notes for your [00:58:00] convenience. Alright, now back to the show. What does all this do? I mean, there is so much money being spent right now on things that are not medically necessary and things that generate, that, create [00:58:15] problems that will generate more medical transactions down the line.
[00:58:20] Stephanie: How is all of this affecting the cost of healthcare for the rest of us?
[00:58:25] Eithan: Oh, well, of course it's making it more expensive. When you look at, let, let's say like over the past [00:58:30] 15 years, the the, the direct proportion that. Medical cost for the average American has increased. What do you, what do you expect to happen to the average salary of the a [00:58:45] MA executive?
[00:58:46] Eithan: Their salary is increased by the exact same proportion. Right? Because of course, as people get sicker, as a CPT coding system gets more complex, more CPT codes, more sick people, more royalties, [00:59:00] these people get richer. But who's paying higher premiums for, to cover interventions by the insurance company that make people more sick and don't do any benefit?
[00:59:10] Eithan: Who, who pays for that mean you? Right. And if you live in a state like [00:59:15] California, Oregon, Washington, right. I think, uh, New York, it's, it's. By state law that all insurance companies have to pay for these interventions, right? They have to. There's no question. Which is why, what I've seen is that there's, the billing codes are, [00:59:30] or the F 64 gender identity disorder.
[00:59:33] Eithan: So your premiums are so much higher than everywhere else because you're paying for these crazy things that don't work, that have no evidence that are harming people. So, um, yeah, like we are getting fleeced [00:59:45] while these people are getting rich.
[00:59:46] Stephanie: This is one reason that I, uh, left my health insurance plan.
[00:59:51] Stephanie: Um, my, my insurance is running out at the end of this week, basically. Um, I was with Pacific Source and for a while on the marketplace, I, I [01:00:00] guess my income was low enough that I qualified for some kind of deduction, um, on the, the premiums. And then I stopped qualifying for that. And then the prices were going up and up and up, and it was looking like if I wanted a similar type of coverage next year, it was gonna be like [01:00:15] 700 plus a month just for.
[01:00:18] Stephanie: And, uh, there's a whole other conversation to be had and I would welcome, if anyone is an, an expert on this or knows an expert on this, I would love a recommendation for who I should interview [01:00:30] about this problem. 'cause it's, it's beyond the scope of this conversation right now. But, um, just the other scandalous aspects of the insurance industry.
[01:00:38] Stephanie: Like for example, um, my pelvic ultrasounds cost over a thousand dollars [01:00:45] after insurance. They would cost less than a thousand dollars if I just paid cash from the beginning. But because I have insurance and it goes through the insurance billing system, I end up getting a larger bill. So I actually joined a health sharing program.
[01:00:59] Stephanie: I did my [01:01:00] research and ended up landing on new health. And I will report back later on this podcast as to how that's working for me. But essentially it's structured the way I want insurance to be structured, which is that I pay for most things cash, price myself. And if I have. [01:01:15] A large expense beyond a certain amount, I'll get help with that.
[01:01:18] Stephanie: So it's basically catastrophic. Um, and that's all someone like me who favors holistic practices. Anyway, that's all I really need. Um, and the premiums are so [01:01:30] much lower. So I just had to vent a little bit about how bogus the healthcare system is in this country, how broken it is. And I would welcome any, again, future guest recommendations to cover that topic more broadly.
[01:01:42] Stephanie: But that's kind of beyond the scope of this particular conversation, which [01:01:45] is specifically about the fraud. Um, but my next question that's more on, on topic, well actually this also might be a little tangential, but, um, this pressure on, on doctors, I read, [01:02:00] and this is just something someone posted on social media, but uh, about a doctor who was getting really fed up with her job because.
[01:02:09] Stephanie: Tell me if this sounds familiar to you. I don't know how much in this shows up in surgery. Maybe probably less [01:02:15] than other branches of medicine. But this, uh, I think she was a primary care doctor and there was a lot of pressure on her to prescribe the corresponding treatment for the code. So I guess this would be called the category one treatment and a lot of [01:02:30] pressure to prescribe medications.
[01:02:32] Stephanie: And so if she had a patient presenting with a given issue and she didn't prescribe the medication, most commonly prescribed for that, she was getting, you know, called into an office, why didn't you prescribe this? [01:02:45] And she was getting sick of it because she was trying to help patients without always prescribing things.
[01:02:49] Stephanie: And I don't know if you experienced that in surgery, if you've heard about that. Can speak to that.
[01:02:53] Eithan: I could definitely see in like the primary care setting, um, where like the, uh. [01:03:00] Solvency of the clinic is based on the retention of patients. Right. If you're in that kind of model environment, right, where like you kind of have to make certain people happy if you want them coming back in surgery, it [01:03:15] can be that kind of situation, you know, maybe in plastic surgery, other specialties.
[01:03:20] Eithan: But, you know, in mine I really don't see it as much because the, you know, we, we do like big surgeries on people who are sick and like you don't really wanna be messing [01:03:30] around doing surgery on sick people who don't need it. So like, if someone doesn't need a surgery, like there's no going beyond that, you know, it's like not happening.
[01:03:40] Eithan: Right. You can go to someone else, maybe someone, you know, someone else is crazy enough to do that surgery, but not [01:03:45] me, you know? Um, yeah. So we don't mess around with that. There's, there's not, because it's like extremely dangerous, you know? Well on
[01:03:52] Stephanie: that, no, I mean, you said that what you were doing right before your meeting with me was reconstructing someone's colon.
[01:03:59] Eithan: Small bowel. [01:04:00] Yeah.
[01:04:00] Stephanie: Okay. I mean, um, yeah, I was just putting it back together. I mean, that's like a normal day at work for you.
[01:04:06] Eithan: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
[01:04:08] Stephanie: That is, that is wild. And I mean, to me, I'm, I'm so squeamish about that kind of thing. [01:04:15] Um, I, I hope I don't ever have to make any major hard decisions about surgery, but what's so crazy to me, and I don't know if you wanna just kind of comment on this more broadly, is the, the.
[01:04:28] Stephanie: Well, I guess [01:04:30] the, the, I was gonna say fetishization, um, I'll put it more gently. The romanticization of surgery amongst trans identified youth, I mean, it goes against all of our bodily instincts. Like, like so much of transgender [01:04:45] ideology does. It's such a dissociative belief system. But I mean, there's just an instinct for me that the thought of going under the knife is horrifying.
[01:04:53] Stephanie: And I, I appreciate that there are people like you out there, Dr. Heim, because I [01:05:00] think the picture. I have in my mind of your typical surgeon is that they're kind of the benevolent sociopath, if you will. The, the, the, that you have to have a brain that can override fear, pain, disgust, [01:05:15] empathy, and just get the job done.
[01:05:16] Stephanie: And we, we have, you know, neurodiversity for that purpose because some people's brains are better suited for some jobs. And so I think you're an amazing person in that you have so much warmth and empathy and kindness, but you also somehow [01:05:30] have the ability to shut that off and cut a person's body open.
[01:05:33] Stephanie: Um, what a blessing that you exist. But, but my point is that to, to a normal person, the thought of going under the knife is like, you know, very, [01:05:45] uh, terrifying. And it's so strange to me that part of the nature of this gender ideology cult is that it's got young people. Minimizing how scary that is and [01:06:00] longing for that, looking forward to it.
[01:06:04] Stephanie: Yeah. What are your thoughts on that?
[01:06:06] Eithan: So it's, it's totally sick because, um, even though I do this for a living, you know, every patient I take to the operating room, right? Like, [01:06:15] you have a chance to talk to these people before, you know, maybe 20, 30 minutes, right? A lot of times, some less than that, right? In, in emergency trauma situations, I might say a few words to 'em and be like, Hey, I gotta get you back there.
[01:06:27] Eithan: You got shot in the belly. I gotta look at your colon. You [01:06:30] know? And so you, you meet these, this person for a short period of time and you're taking 'em back to a room they've never been to, and they're gonna lay on this cold, hard table. They're gonna be naked, unconscious, paralyzed, strapped to that [01:06:45] bed, surrounded by strangers who they have, they've never met.
[01:06:49] Eithan: And those strangers are gonna be holding knives and they're about to cut you open. When you bring that person to the operating room, like the way I've always thought that is that you have to have a reason, a [01:07:00] very good reason to bring that person to the operating room. They have to have a problem that you know exactly what that problem is and that you're gonna fix it.
[01:07:08] Eithan: You can assure that person that whatever I'm gonna do to you is gonna make you better afterwards than [01:07:15] before. And, um, there's no small surgeon when you're the one being operated on. Right? And when these people go. Get these procedures done, they're being irreversibly changed. And it's not just like these cosmetic procedures like [01:07:30] a rhinoplasty or like a facelift, right?
[01:07:33] Eithan: Like those have no effect on your physiological function. What these transgender interventions are doing are having irreversible effects, destructive effects on your [01:07:45] natural physiological function. For example, your breasts, right? As a natural function. If you remove it, that function is gone. If you have an orchiectomy, a ectomy, um, you know, uh, what they say, a [01:08:00] vaginoplasty, which is just a creation of a large wound, you're radically, radically are altering.
[01:08:07] Eithan: You're naturally occurring physiology and in a way that is, is like up until this point, like [01:08:15] unfathomable because whenever we go to a restaurant, we just go to the bathroom, don't even think about it, right? For these people, they have to be worried about urinating all over themselves because the stream from their surgically manipulated urethra might have [01:08:30] scar tissue and might deflect their stream one way or another.
[01:08:33] Eithan: Maybe they have a stenosis of their urethra. Maybe the fluid just builds up in their bladder and they have to get a super pubic tube, right? The, these are, these are things that are [01:08:45] so radical, right, that alter the physiology so profoundly that for these people to, to, you know, kind of minimize it is the sickest thing in the world.
[01:08:56] Eithan: But for the surgeons to entertain those notions is [01:09:00] even sicker because like, you know, people always kind of look at surgeons like sociopaths, but I would, I would. Every surgeon I've met with exception of maybe like one or two, like, not really like that. You know, like we can in the moment in [01:09:15] surgery, we're always cool and, you know, we kind of handle business whatever we need to do.
[01:09:19] Eithan: But, um, when something goes wrong, I mean, these things, you know, they weigh on our souls for a long time. Like, when something goes wrong, we carry that [01:09:30] burden home and we think about it every minute of every day for weeks, you know, and that's how it is for, I would say, most surgeons. Um, but you have to bury it down and then stomp on it, and then just know that it's there, but you just [01:09:45] gotta keep on operating.
[01:09:46] Eithan: And then, but, but these surgeons don't seem to have that, which is, which is crazy, you know, it's, it's a very sick thing. Um, hard for non-surgeons, non-surgeons to really, truly appreciate how sick that is, what they're doing to these [01:10:00] kids, even adults. How they can just mutilate these people on their operating tables and then just go home and be fine with it.
[01:10:08] Eithan: I mean, these people are psychopaths.
[01:10:10] Stephanie: It's, it's strange that we're still having had these conversations. [01:10:15] Um, but I'm thinking again, back to that conversation I recently had with Paige Herman, and again, I just wanna give her nothing but love for having me on her show. Uh, 'cause I mean, she's risking cancellation talking to someone like me, and, and this is not her area of [01:10:30] expertise, but she's asking the hard questions.
[01:10:31] Stephanie: And, and you know, when we talk to someone who hasn't spent a, a majority of their waking hours over the last several years, diving deep into this issue, when we talk to those folks, it's [01:10:45] like, oh yeah, I remember when I still had that question. Right? And so one of those sort of. Rookie questions that comes up.
[01:10:52] Stephanie: Uh, is, or it's not so much a question, it's a statement. And this is a way that a lot of people who consider themselves [01:11:00] kind of middle of the road or libertarian feel about it is, well, I don't think that people should be doing this to kids, but I think adults should be able to do whatever they want with their own bodies.
[01:11:08] Stephanie: That's a common sentiment. Right. And my response, I had this, uh, exchange with Paige after we [01:11:15] finished a recording, 'cause she was like grappling with what came up in our interview and trying to figure out what her stance is now that she's learning more about it. And she was, um, gonna say some kind of disclaimer about, you know, bodily autonomy.
[01:11:27] Stephanie: And my response to her is the same to [01:11:30] everyone who raises this point. It's regardless of what you believe people should be able to do to themselves. What do you believe doctors should be able to do to people? Because this is not about what a person can do to themselves. This is, this is medically sanctioned self-harm.
[01:11:44] Stephanie: This is [01:11:45] self-harm via a person with professional training who took an oath not to harm.
[01:11:51] Eithan: Yeah. And, and that's the key thing, is that, um, what a doctor does, the goal is to restore naturally occurring [01:12:00] physiology in order to promote health. Health being the natural state of occurrence to allow human survival and thriving right, naturally occurring physiology.
[01:12:11] Eithan: That's our goal. Um, if a patient where to come into my [01:12:15] clinic and say they want their leg chopped off because they believed they should have been born without a leg, if I took that patient to an operating room and chopped off their leg, I would go to prison. So we don't have Bali autonomy. You don't have the autonomy to tell a doctor to chop off your [01:12:30] leg, just like an adult does not have the autonomy to tell a doctor that, you know, to cut off my breasts or to cut off my penis, because that in no way is creating health because you're destroying natural occurring physiology.
[01:12:44] Eithan: And then, [01:12:45] uh, um, reducing the ability for that individual to survive and thrive, like you said before, the end consequence for these interventions is that these people die earlier. And the time in between getting these [01:13:00] interventions done in the time of their death is a whole lot more misery. That's not the job of doctors to make people more miserable, to make them unhealthier and to destroy their naturally occurring physiology.
[01:13:13] Eithan: So it's [01:13:15] um, it's like this. Argument that people say, but they don't really think about. Because if you were to do this in any other situation, a doctor would lose their license for it. But there's this cutout for this situation because it's politically controversial. All we have to do [01:13:30] is reorient the Overton window back to reality, back to like where it exists for everything else.
[01:13:38] Eithan: We, how, how we perceive everything else around like autonomy in, in medicine. [01:13:45] So yeah, I mean, you know, it's, people kind of hold onto it because they wanna, you know, be on the fence and have friends on both sides. But yeah, it's a kind of fundamentally incoherent argument.
[01:13:57] Stephanie: A reason I feel need to speak out about it is 'cause [01:14:00] my training is in mental health, and this is all being done in the name of mental health.
[01:14:04] Stephanie: It's supposed to be. It, it's, it's per, uh, promoted as a treatment for a mental illness, and it's not. [01:14:15] And so you're exposing this, this truth that in the system officially in terms of how it's recorded, it's not being done as a treatment for a mental health condition. It's being listed as a treatment for [01:14:30] a, a condition that doesn't actually exist.
[01:14:32] Eithan: And, and isn't it so ironic that when WPATH and all these organizations were advocating for the change from gender identity disorder in the i CD 10 to gender incongruence. [01:14:45] ICD 11, the goal was to de pathologize and de-stigmatize the diagnosis because you go from something that has gender identity disorder like a disorder to gender incongruence.
[01:14:59] Eithan: And then the [01:15:00] shift, you know, also is in ICD 11, it's a sexual health category, so it's, it's classified under a biological disease. But in so many of these cases, like even in ICD 11 as gender incongruence [01:15:15] and even in all these codes they're using to fraudulently bill insurance companies, they're introducing these very severe pathologies.
[01:15:23] Eithan: You know, they're pathologizing it, but for the reason for the doctors to get paid so outwardly, yeah, they wanna [01:15:30] say they wanna de pathologize it by switching it from one diagnosis to the other. But when you look at the insurance records for many of these doctors, they're pathologizing it. But using.
[01:15:40] Eithan: Diseases that don't exist, that have no evidence that they're real. And, [01:15:45] and this is what they're using to defraud insurance companies to make sure that they get paid and their clinics stay open. I mean, can, can you imagine of a greater, you know, a greater, uh, uh, criminal mastermind than what these people are doing?
[01:15:58] Eithan: It's totally crazy and it's [01:16:00] happening in the open, you know,
[01:16:03] Stephanie: where do you see all of this heading?
[01:16:06] Eithan: Criminal prosecutions. That's what I think, which is what I'm working on. Um, because right now, the problem is that the [01:16:15] prosecutors in the, so after January, 2025, when Trump was inaugurated, my wife was working at the Department of Justice as a assistant US attorney, as a prosecutor.
[01:16:27] Eithan: After he took office, there were changes. [01:16:30] Not only in the culture of the Department of Justice, but also in the manpower because they went to a five day in-person work week. Right. Which was good because when they go to a five day in-person work week, many of the corrupt [01:16:45] prosecutors don't wanna do that because they kind of want their lifestyles.
[01:16:48] Eithan: So a lot of them left so many of the federal districts across the United States. 'cause each state is broken up into federal districts. So like in Texas, you have the northern district, Southern [01:17:00] eastern, Western federal districts where federal crimes are prosecuted. These. Federal districts have been gutted of prosecutors, which on one side is good because you got rid of a lot of the corruption.
[01:17:12] Eithan: But on the other side, um, [01:17:15] you have a very small number of attorneys who can actually prosecute these cases. Like in some civil divisions, you might have one or two guys or ladies, you know, like, so you have a small number of prosecutors, but then also there's a knowledge deficit. The [01:17:30] prosecutors who are, would be pursuing these cases are, if they're not fully kind of on board with the issue, they'll, they'll, uh, uh, uh.
[01:17:40] Eithan: Kinda like, um, drag their feet, they won't prosecute it. They'll just ignore it. They'll [01:17:45] sabotage it. Um, and for the ones who would prosecute it, they don't understand it because they don't understand the scope of what's happening. They don't, 'cause you kind of need like a background of medical knowledge to realize, oh, like precocious puberty.
[01:17:59] Eithan: If you [01:18:00] see that diagnosis being used in a chart for 16 year olds, that's fraud. It should be, you know, like, you have to know that that's a diagnosis for like six to eight or nine or 10, right? Or endocrine disorder. You have to be able to look at [01:18:15] that diagnosis and be able to use the criteria you find online to look, be like, oh, this is a little suspicious.
[01:18:22] Eithan: So. There's these huge burdens that have to be overcome. But for prosecutors, this is like kind of what their careers are [01:18:30] made for. To pursue a case like this in a major hospital could be anywhere from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. So they could be responsible for, you know, prosecuting, you know, one of the biggest insurance fraud scandals in the history of insurance fraud scandals.[01:18:45]
[01:18:45] Eithan: So once you get prosecutors, you know, once they smell blood in the water, right, I think they're gonna, they're gonna start biting. Um, and I think I'm making some headway in that.
[01:18:55] Stephanie: I hope that someone hears this conversation and passes it [01:19:00] along to a certain prosecutor in their life who needs some ideas for the, what their claim to fame is gonna be.
[01:19:06] Stephanie: Yeah. Um, it does seem like there's kind of a collective emboldening happening in this country right now. [01:19:15] Um, now I'm gonna ask you the sort of question that. Bothers me when people ask me this type of question. So feel free to push back, because whenever people ask me big picture questions, I'm like, who am I to [01:19:30] say I, I'm not looking at macro data, I'm just looking at what I can see.
[01:19:33] Stephanie: Right. But, um, how long, I mean, given the finger that you do have on the pulses that you are checking, how long do you see all of [01:19:45] this taking before there's a major sea change in this country?
[01:19:51] Eithan: You know, I, I think that the one thing I pride myself on is, you know, having my finger on the pulse of what's going on because, and just outta necessity in order to [01:20:00] free myself from the, from the prosecution, you know, I had to fight, you know, I had to understand what was happening in our society and know what kind of message was gonna resonate.
[01:20:10] Eithan: You know? That's how I won my case, right? Like, no one was helping us, [01:20:15] right? It was, it was us. We had to fight for ourselves. So that's, that's one thing I, I feel like I've gotten really good at. And, um, so it's like, what has to happen? When is it gonna happen? I think that, um, the, the severity of this crime [01:20:30] is so great, right?
[01:20:32] Eithan: The. The consequences are so severe for these children and all these vulnerable people that the people who are guilty of these crimes will have no capacity to [01:20:45] self-reflect and come to terms with the magnitude of what they've done to the people they claim to have cared about. Because you had the people who were screaming the loudest about saying they were trying to protect these kids who were actually the ones who were destroying them.
[01:20:59] Eithan: So for these [01:21:00] people to kind of accept that fact, I believe for the vast majority of them is impossible. And unfortunately, a lot of those people have a huge amount of state power. So I think that the only way to get to the other side of this [01:21:15] issue is gonna, is gonna be some type of major conflict between us and them.
[01:21:20] Eithan: You know, whatever that looks like, who, who knows. But, um, you know, major social change is usually only, um, uh. [01:21:30] Undergone through, through blood. Unfortunately, I think that's gonna be the case. I know that sounds very dismal. People don't probably wanna hear that, but um, yeah, that's what was gonna hear. Well, I mean, situation, you know, unfortunately Kirk, I'm not called Charlie, Kirk called for it Charlie Kirk, but you know, Charlie Kirk was
[01:21:44] Stephanie: [01:21:45] recently martyred.
[01:21:46] Eithan: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it's like these people want us dead for a reason. You know, I mean, it's the, this conflict has already started. It's that people on our side are only starting to wake up to the fact that we're in it. I mean, we can [01:22:00] dilute ourselves to the fact that this isn't happening, but it's happening.
[01:22:04] Eithan: You know, this is a war and we're in it. The thing that we have to begin realizing is that this is a conflict that we have to start fighting, you know? [01:22:15] And, um, you know, this is one of the means is by, um, you know, using the legal means to, to go after people who have committed, uh, crimes based on our legal system.
[01:22:27] Eithan: Because the thing. That comes after that is [01:22:30] not good and we should do everything we can to avoid it,
[01:22:33] Stephanie: and there really is no middle ground as much as some people who are new to the issue might want to kind of clinging to a rosy, idealistic view that some kind of compromise can be reached. I don't know if you've been following [01:22:45] like the Tisch Hyman situation.
[01:22:47] Stephanie: Um. Do you know what I'm talking about there? Yeah.
[01:22:49] Eithan: Oh yeah. Yeah. The She's from California.
[01:22:52] Stephanie: Yeah. So just for listeners now, I haven't been following this situation closely, so Aton, if I say something wrong, please correct me. But [01:23:00] basically, uh, you know, many people go through kind of 15 minutes of fame in the spotlight of social media.
[01:23:05] Stephanie: And Tish Hyman is someone who recently claimed, came into that spotlight because she was kicked out of a gem for speaking out about a man in her locker room. And I think she didn't [01:23:15] have the background on like, the battle that the gender critical movement has been fighting for the years before. So in this public role of getting all this attention, she was saying things that, uh, a lot of gender critical people were like very nice to her, but basically saying, no, we already [01:23:30] tried that.
[01:23:30] Stephanie: It doesn't work. Yeah. So like the idea, oh, there's men, women, and transgender people. Transgender people have their own spaces. It's like, no, you don't understand. They want our spaces. They want access to everything that Yeah. You know, the men wanna be in women's spaces. They don't want their [01:23:45] own space, they don't want their own sporting competitions.
[01:23:47] Stephanie: You know, it's like
[01:23:48] Eithan: things like that. And that's, that's the point, is it's domination. Right? Yeah. And, you know, for, you know, she seems like a great, great lady and, you know, standup person. Yeah. I always try to, um, you know, grant, like a certain degree of, um, grace. [01:24:00] Totally grace. Yeah. Because it's like, you know, you know, you're gonna say things that maybe like in the future you may not mean.
[01:24:05] Eithan: And even if you do that, that's totally cool too. You're on our side, like, Hey, you're part of our camp, man. Like, all power to it, you know? Um, uh, I, I'm all [01:24:15] about that. But, um, uh, I think she's great. But yeah, it's like, you know, it's, um, uh, like they, they will not stop. I mean, they, you know, I, I experienced firsthand like, you know, they tr they will fabricate crimes to send you to prison for a decade so that [01:24:30] your wife raises your children.
[01:24:32] Eithan: Alone, you know? Yeah. I mean, they were gonna put You were persecuted. Yeah. Yeah. And, and these people were relentless. I mean, it wasn't like, like we would push back and then they would. Back off a little bit. No, it was, it was like, it [01:24:45] was, it was a fight to the death, um, quite literally, you know, I mean, towards the end of the prosecution, it's, it's things got so bad that it's even hard to, to fathom that I was there not that long ago.
[01:24:58] Stephanie: You've said so many [01:25:00] beautiful and clear and succinct statements. I'm really looking forward to this coming out. I think it'll help a lot of people. Um, really grateful for the work that you're doing and standing perfectly in your role. Like clearly you have been placed [01:25:15] where you have been for a reason.
[01:25:17] Stephanie: Um, by the way, I'm really happy that you and your wife went ahead and had a child in the middle of all that. Because
[01:25:22] Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
[01:25:23] Stephanie: Because I remember when I was listening to your story thinking like, man, this is gonna throw off their plans to have a family. But nope, [01:25:30] you didn't even let it do that.
[01:25:31] Eithan: Yeah, yeah.
[01:25:31] Eithan: She had an emergency C-section because she became preeclamptic and then we were rushed into the hospital, which is where, you know, into the hospital at work at, and then she had failure to descend as prolonged labor, and then she had to have an emergency C-section. It was super [01:25:45] traumatic. And then an hour afterwards I had to leave the court.
[01:25:49] Eithan: Yeah. Oh yeah. What a crazy
[01:25:52] Stephanie: time in your lives. Yeah. How, how is everybody now? How's your family?
[01:25:57] Eithan: Oh, great. Fantastic. My wife [01:26:00] works for the attorney general's office in Texas, so
[01:26:04] Stephanie: That's That's wonderful. And um, and you are able to work according to your conscience?
[01:26:12] Eithan: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I was working the whole time during the [01:26:15] prosecution.
[01:26:15] Eithan: Yeah.
[01:26:16] Stephanie: But now you're in a different, um, you're not at Texas Children's Hospital.
[01:26:20] Eithan: Yeah. And I, I finished that even like the day the feds came to my home. I was, by that point I was done. Um, 'cause that was during my training, but I've been at the same [01:26:30] job ever since. So
[01:26:31] Stephanie: what are, what are you, um, what do your employers and coworkers think about you?
[01:26:38] Eithan: Oh, supportive. You know, um, and, you know, it's kind of general and trauma surgery in a small town, so it's a county hospital, [01:26:45] so it's, you know, a kind of friendly environment in terms of like the political scene.
[01:26:50] Stephanie: Sounds like you help Detransition sometimes.
[01:26:52] Eithan: Yeah. Yeah. Try to
[01:26:54] Stephanie: looking at their medical records and things.
[01:26:56] Eithan: Well that, um, but that's where the, the keys to the fraud lie. [01:27:00] Um, is in the medical records because it's like your eyes can't see what your mind doesn't know. So these people have been holding onto records that contain within them, like multiple felonies, right? Yeah. And if your eye, [01:27:15] if your mind does know it, your eyes can't see it.
[01:27:17] Eithan: So, I mean, this is a, a mystery that is in the process of being unraveled. And, um, you know, by finding patterns, by finding which diagnosis codes were used in which [01:27:30] situations, um, why these people used it, um, what they wrote in their medical documentation. And I feel forever thankful that these people, you know, detransition are even willing to share it because, um, and you know, with that, I have to use it [01:27:45] responsibly in order to try to push something forward.
[01:27:48] Eithan: Like, I can't just like. Do nothing with it. I have to try to do something like, um, you know, get justice for these people who are harmed because doctors were the ones who harmed them. I feel like it's my [01:28:00] obligation as a doctor to try to get justice for 'em, you know? 'cause just as a man in, in society, it's like my job to try to protect the vulnerable.
[01:28:09] Eithan: So
[01:28:09] Stephanie: thank you for sharing. That's, it's really beautiful and I just, I love to meet good people [01:28:15] and see examples of, um, people with a sound conscience and a good story of courage and redemption. 'cause you fought the good fight and
[01:28:24] Speaker 3: yeah,
[01:28:24] Stephanie: there, there were times where you were looking at 10 years in prison, you spent down all your savings.[01:28:30]
[01:28:30] Stephanie: Um, there were times where you probably worried that you weren't going to be able to practice in the field that you'd been working your whole life to practice in. But now you're here and you are using your story to help others. So thank you so much for that.
[01:28:44] Eithan: Of [01:28:45] course. Thank you.
[01:28:47] Stephanie: Alright, so where can people find you?
[01:28:50] Eithan: Um, just on, on X, it's just my first and last name. Aan? Heim, but it's spelled E-I-T-H-A-N and then HAIM.
[01:28:58] Stephanie: Alright. Dr. [01:29:00] Aan Heim, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thanks. Thank you for listening to you must be some kind of therapist. If you enjoyed this episode. Kindly take a moment to rate, review, share, or comment on it using your platform [01:29:15] of choice.
[01:29:16] Stephanie: And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Rero for this awesome theme song, half Awake and to Pods by Nick for production. [01:29:30] For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD, repair.
[01:29:40] Stephanie: Any resource you heard mentioned on this show plus how to get in touch with me [01:29:45] can all be found in the notes and links below Rain or shine. I hope you'll step outside to breathe the air today in the words of Max Airman. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is [01:30:00] still a beautiful [01:30:15] [01:30:30] world.