groups

In 1993, my wife was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. I was forced to stay in my job as General Manager of a small Pittsburgh corporation for 5 years because I couldn't risk the chance of losing her health insurance and it was difficult/impossible to find a similar position elsewhere with insurance coverage for her pre-existing condition. The man who owned the company had retired and his son was totally inept and, despite my best efforts, was financially running it into the ground. During that period, he would fail to pay the premiums on time occasionally, resulting in a procedure done 2 or 3 months prior, suddenly being denied for payment until the insurance was reinstated. (We had no knowledge until payment was denied, after the fact.) I finally accepted a position as Vice President/Operations Manager of another business with complete insurance coverage. All went fine until 2002 when an economic downturn caused the business owner to lose a considerable amount of his working capital. During that period, we lost our health insurance about 5 times as he defaulted on one plan and then subscribed to yet a new one. I finally got my wife privately insured by one of the giant insurance companies on a 70% -30% basis. (They paid 70% of her bills and we were liable for 30%). She had had a recent recurrence after being in remission for some years. When we received the statement for her first new chemo treatment, we realized that this was going to cost us almost $200,000 a year. We would have lost our home and life savings at that rate. Through intense effort and negotiations I was finally able to secure insurance through a previous insurer at a very high monthly premium. Suzy spent the last 3 years of her life equally worrying about her own mortality and financial ruin. This is not right!