Outside the chemo treatment room: Insurance denials

From Nicholas Kristof's column:

I regularly receive heartbreaking emails from readers simultaneously combating the predation of disease and insurers. One correspondent, Linda, told me how she had been diagnosed earlier this year with abdominal and bladder cancer – leading to battles with her insurance company.

"I will never forget standing outside the chemo treatment room knowing that the medication needed to save my life was only a few feet away, but that because I had private insurance it wasn't available to me," Linda wrote. "I read a comment from someone saying that they didn't want a faceless government bureaucrat deciding if they would or would not get treatment. Well, a faceless bureaucrat from my private insurance made the decision that I wouldn't get treatment and that I wasn't worth saving."

Advice: Insist that your representatives in Congress vote for a public plan that will cover people like Linda.

Read another story on an insurer’s denial of chemotherapy treatment.

Thanks to Nicholas Kristof for the source column in today's New York Times.