A good friend of mine from high school was featured in the Sioux City Journal after the company underwriting her employer’s group health insurance dropped them less than 2 months before she finishes her Hodgkins Lymphoma treatments:

Sarah LaBrune was doing everything we’d like young people to do. She graduated from high school and earned her degree at Buena Vista University. She got a full-time job as a reporter at the Dakota County Star newspaper in South Sioux City. She worked in a profession she loves and began chipping away at a $17,000 college debt. She made car payments of $200 per month, wrote her $350 rent check each month and boosted the economy by shopping in her spare time.

Oh, and she paid her $429 monthly health insurance premium, securing coverage under a group plan offered at her workplace by the John Alden group.

Good thing LaBrune had the insurance. She was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma, a malignant cancer, in her neck and chest last spring. She had surgery May 30 and began chemotherapy June 29.

LaBrune met her $1,000 deductible and $2,000 out-of-pocket requirements in the initial surgery. Through midautumn she had spent an additional $1,000 on co-payments for prescriptions, visits to the doctor and a wig.

But her insurance picked up the rest, an amount she said exceeded $101,000 through September.

“At least I didn’t have to worry about insurance,” LaBrune said.

But she did. Employees at the Dakota County Star received a letter Oct. 10 from the John Alden firm. The letter said the insurance company would terminate coverage for employees of the newspaper Nov. 14.

I choked when I read she was paying $429/month for coverage under a group plan. When I left my last job, I was eligible for full benefits under COBRA for about $300/month. So not only was she paying her premium, she was paying a HIGH premium.

Though Sarah is a good friend, I don’t know all of the specifics of her treatment. All I know is that she’s had a perpetually sunny outlook on the whole situation, and is clearly better than anyone I know at making lemonade out of life’s lemons.

Still, it’s time to fix our health care system. Sarah is lucky she had coverage to begin with, and also fortunate that she was able to find coverage to finish out her treatment (I can’t imagine it’s easy to find any company willing to insure a cancer patient), but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions of people who slip through the cracks. HealthCare4Every1.org is the Connecticut organization working to bring universal health care to nutmeggers.

Oh, and to the person who wrote this comment on the Sioux City Journal article in response to another comment calling for universal health care:

” How wrong you are. This young gal would probably die while waiting on a long list for treatment if on a universal health plan. “

You are an asshole.

Excuse me, I mean you are an uninformed asshole. Wait times for cancer services in British Columbia are one week.