Doctors don't learn billing. Why does Casey Means keep saying she did?

It's almost as if there's something else at play...

Casey and Calley Means’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast has racked up 3.2 million views so far. While we covered this in depth on a recent Conspirituality, there’s one moment from this misinformation-packed episode I want to unpack.

Casey has a specific rhetorical technique she regularly employs: she lists all the things she didn’t learn while attending Stanford Medical School—which, if you read the curriculum, she learned at least some of those things—and she concludes what she says she did learn:

I was only taught how to, you know, do the surgery and then bill for it.

She repeated this sentiment at the congressional panel on health and nutrition:

We learn how to drug, we learn how to cut, and we learn how to bill.

I have a hunch this will be repeated when her appearance on Joe Rogan drops next week.

Here’s the thing: there’s no modules on billing in the Stanford MD curriculum. In fact, most doctors in America never learn billing. If they do, it’s usually during residency, with limited contact. Even then it’s rare given that hospital systems have dedicated billing departments.

I mentioned this on Threads and received a few intriguing replies.

I also DM’d with a few doctors who confirmed billing was not part of their training. They told me the only experiences they had was a primer on coding during residency—and more on coding below. Some only learned when they opened their own clinic.

Casey Means never made it that far, as she dropped out of her head and neck surgery during her last year of residency at OHSU.

And yet she continues to claim it’s one of the only things she learned.