RED BANK'S "DOCTOR PENIS" DRAWS NY TIMES SCRUTINY FOR BREAST SURGERY PAYOUTS

The offices of Rowe Plastic Surgery at 267 Broad Street. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)

By BRIAN DONOHUE

We at redbankgreen pride ourselves on knowing every turn in every road, every quirky character, every business hanging a shingle in this town.

So perhaps it is a testament to just how far this reporter has come in his own personal journey towards self-acceptance that it was only last week that he learned that our fair town is a base of operations for a plastic surgeon who has trademarked the name “Dr. Penis.™”

Dr. Norman Rowe landed in the spotlight as the subject of a front-page New York Times story Sunday about an insurance arbitration system the paper reported paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the advertised cost for breast reduction procedures.

Rowe has used the system to receive payments of up to $440,000 for a procedure his website advertises for $15,000 to $25,000, the Times reports.

Rowe, who has trademarked the aforementioned phallic nickname for his penis-enlargement procedures (neither covered by insurance nor the main focus of the NY Times story) has an office at 267 Broad Street, as well as offices in New York City and Florida.

“On social media, he flaunts a lavish lifestyle,” the Times reports. “An Instagram post in February detailing his 60th birthday party featured a performance from the rapper 50 Cent and a custom-cake recreation of his 1950s vintage Porsche.”

The NY Post last year reported how his Florida office had seen a large increase in patients seeking procedures with hopes that a surgery-enhanced “Mar-a-Lago face” might help them land jobs in the Trump administration.

Rowe’s high profile now extends to being the lede in the NY Times’ exposé of an arbitration system in which insurers are shelling out payments sometimes 20 times higher than what the procedures normally cost.

Some health plans said they have increased premiums this year to cover the extra costs of the awards, the paper reports.

A Rowe Plastic Surgery billboard alongside a New Jersey highway.

The Times reports the number of arbitration filings exploded after Congress passed the 2022 No Surprises Act, designed to eliminate surprise medical bills for patients who showed up in the emergency room and were treated by a doctor who didn’t take their insurance.

The act established a “one or the other” arbitration system modeled after the one Major League Baseball uses to settle salary disputes between players and teams.

When a billing dispute goes to arbitration, the provider submits one figure and the insurance company another. Instead of coming up with a compromise figure, the arbitrator must pick one side’s price.

Insurance companies are losing the vast majority of the cases, according to data compiled by the Times.

The practice has sparked a wave of lawsuits from insurers, including one by insurer EmblemHealth, which cited five of Dr. Rowe’s arbitration awards for elective breast reduction surgeries.

In the first case, in November 2024, Dr. Rowe won a payment of $112,500 that covered his work and the work of an assistant surgeon. In the fifth one, in late December 2025, his practice brought and won separate claims for each surgeon, totaling $440,000. Altogether, the practice won more than $1.4 million from those five surgeries alone.

EmblemHealth’s strategy also changed over time. According to the suit, the company started with a low counteroffer, around $6,000. Over time, it tried offering fees as high as $124,000, but continued to lose. The plan’s lawyers also started including language in their briefs stating that Dr. Rowe “has a pattern of exploiting” the process.

The Times story continues:

Michael Gottlieb, the lawyer who handles Dr. Rowe’s arbitration filings, declined to speak about continuing litigation but did broadly defend his clients’ seeking much higher amounts than insurers typically pay. He described the arbitrators as having “reverse sticker shock” at how low the health plan payments were.

“When they got wind of three-digit payments for massive, complex surgeries and they know they pay their plumber more to fix a toilet, they just gravitate toward the providers’ offers even if they do seem eyebrow-raisingly high,” he said.

When a reporter attempted to reach out to Dr. Rowe for comment, a person who answered the phone at the Rowe Plastic Surgery office in Red Bank replied, “No, we’re not interested.”

In late 2023, the Biden administration proposed changes to the arbitration system, including more scrutiny of ineligible claims. The Trump administration has not yet put into place those reforms.

Only one bill has been introduced in Congress to change arbitration, and it would increase penalties on insurers that fail to pay doctors quickly after cases are concluded.

redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331.

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