Insurance Refused to Cover Her Vomiting Condition. So She Barfed Outside Their Office. [View all]

[Jilly_in_VA]

After repeatedly being denied coverage for treatment that would help alleviate symptoms of the illness that had been causing her to vomit constantly for the last three years—sometimes making it impossible to keep even a cup of water down—Sandy Honig was, in her words, in a “very, very dark place and feeling hopeless.”

“It’s hard to get up in the morning when the first thing you have to do is drink a cup of water, and that makes you sick,” Honig told VICE News.

Honig suffers from gastroparesis, or partial paralysis of the stomach that prevents the stomach from fully emptying. “Anything that I eat or drink makes me really nauseous,” she told VICE News Thursday. “I don’t really eat meals… socially, sometimes that ends up happening, but then I always end up in the bathroom.”

One of the most common treatments for gastroparesis when medication is ineffective is a Botox injection, which helps relax the part of the stomach connecting to the small intestine so the body can more easily digest food. But although Honig’s doctors recommended the treatment after more than a half-dozen medications failed to alleviate her symptoms, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield denied her coverage for the injections, saying they weren’t medically necessary.

So Honig decided to give her health insurance company a look at just exactly what she’s been dealing with.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7d8w/sandy-honig-vomit-video-anthem

Health insurance is a scam. Anthem sucks. Single payer NOW!