States have passed hundreds of laws to protect people from wrongful insurance denials. Yet from emergency services to fertility preservation, insurers still say no.
On Wednesday, a ProPublica investigation traced how a Michigan company would not pay for an FDA-approved cancer medication for a patient, Forrest VanPatten, even though a state law requires insurers to cover cancer drugs. That expensive treatment offered VanPatten his only chance for survival. The father of two died at the age 50, still battling the insurer for access to the therapy. Regulators never intervened.
My mother-in-law’s sister survived cancer once. Years later, she started feeling pain and worried that the cancer had come back. Her insurance company repeatedly denied basic scans/tests to see if the cancer had returned.
My wife’s cousins finally got sick of all this and paid out of their own pockets for the tests. She had cancer again. Only by this point, it had spread. It was in the base of her tongue and was blocking her throat. They had to remove her tongue, but that didn’t stop the cancer. She eventually passed away.
Would she have survived if the insurance company approved the tests in the beginning? There’s no way to guarantee this, but she would definitely have had a better shot at survival.
But at least the insurance company saved some money, right? Isn’t that the most important thing? 😡
Land of the free*.
*As long as we can fleece you.
My mother-in-law’s sister survived cancer once. Years later, she started feeling pain and worried that the cancer had come back. Her insurance company repeatedly denied basic scans/tests to see if the cancer had returned.
My wife’s cousins finally got sick of all this and paid out of their own pockets for the tests. She had cancer again. Only by this point, it had spread. It was in the base of her tongue and was blocking her throat. They had to remove her tongue, but that didn’t stop the cancer. She eventually passed away.
Would she have survived if the insurance company approved the tests in the beginning? There’s no way to guarantee this, but she would definitely have had a better shot at survival.
But at least the insurance company saved some money, right? Isn’t that the most important thing? 😡