Leroy Sievers at NPR blogs about his ongoing cancer treatment, and this post jumped out at me. I had exactly the same reaction as one of his readers:

I had just sat down at my computer. I wanted to go through the latest notes that you all had sent in before I started to write. My plan was to write about my visit tomorrow with new doctors, who have a new kind of radiation machine, called Novalis. It can focus the radiation so precisely that they can use it on the tumors in my spine without doing any harm to the surrounding tissue. At least that’s the hope. Given that the alternative is to simply wait for the tumor to grow and cause my vertebra to fracture, I’m holding on tight to that hope.

And then I saw this note from Robert:

I think the problem with the blog is that it is not realistic for the average patient. Many of the treatments you receive are just not available to the average patient even with insurance. My wife once had a doctor tell her he wouldn’t have discussed a treatment she had if she was on Medicare, because they wouldn’t pay for it. Most cancer patients are struggling to pay for what limited options they have and can only dream of the trips and things some people use for an escape. Hopefully the successes you have had will help let people know there are still options and the publicity will make them available to everyone.

He’s right, of course. I have been very lucky. I’m being treated at one of the best hospitals in the country. My insurance has covered the procedures. I did have a couple of fights with them because they declared the Radio Frequency Ablation procedure “experimental” and refused to pay. The first time they did this I had already had the procedure. They approved it and then apparently changed their minds. After a flurry of phone calls, they agreed to pay. A couple of weeks later, we went through the same fight again, as if the first round had never happened. In the end, they agreed to pay again. These decisions are very often made by insurance company doctors who are not specialists in the procedures in question. My doctor who performed the RFA told me that once the insurance company doctor who refused to cover a cancer procedure was a gynecologist.

It is a travesty that patients are refused treatments that can save their lives, or at least make their lives a little easier, because of financial considerations. How can anyone even try to make that kind of judgment? To decide how much money should be spent to save a person’s life? Like the old line goes, “Who made them God?” I won’t even go into the whole issue of how much money the government wastes, and how many lives could be saved. That’s just too easy.

We have to keep fighting this. I truly hope that from now on my insurance company will cover all RFA procedures. But I don’t know if they will. Did they agree in my case just because I fought back? If nothing else, I think that if an insurance company denies needed coverage, it should be confronted. It’s hard to get to a real person, to fight through the computer systems, but I think it’s worth it. Even if they still deny coverage, at least someone should have to answer the questions, “How can you refuse to help me? How can you condemn me?” Maybe it will just make them uncomfortable for a few minutes. But that’s a start.