‘No one should have to be fighting cancer and insurance at the same time’

Instead of being able to calmly focus on her chemotherapy treatment, Arete Tsoukalas had to spend hours on the phone arguing with her insurer while receiving infusions in the hospital.

Instead of being able to calmly focus on her chemotherapy treatment, Arete Tsoukalas had to spend hours on the phone arguing with her insurer while receiving infusions in the hospital. Diagnosed with leukemia three years ago, Tsoukalas, 26, was stunned to learn that her insurer’s coverage of the drug she needed came with a $13,000 monthly copay, which the recent college graduate could not afford. She was forced to go without the medication for three months, when she was finally able to obtain it through the drug manufacturer’s assistance program. “No one should have to be fighting cancer and insurance at the same time,” Tsoukalas, a West Lafayette, Indiana, resident who is now in law school, told CNN. “It’s such a cruel system. We live in a country where people are truly kicked down when they are at their weakest and most vulnerable, both physically and emotionally.” Tsoukalas, who is now in remission, is far from alone. Americans’ pent-up fury with the nation’s health insurance industry burst into the spotlight last week after the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in midtown Manhattan. They flooded social media with posts and videos about denials of medical treatments and claims, as well as other frustrations with the complicated system. Police on Monday arrested Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the executive’s killing. Mangione underwent surgery to treat back pain in recent years, according to a friend and online postings. The backdrop of his X account included a photo of an X-ray of a spine with screws in it, and he reported reading or wanting to read a number of books about coping with chronic back pain on Goodreads, the book review website. The majority of insured US adults had at least one health insurance problem – including denial of claims – in the span of a year, according to a survey released in June 2023 by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research group. Still, 81% of respondents rated their health insurance as “excellent” or “good,” the same survey found.