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A tragic journey
Heart condition takes life of Las Vegan after long search for insurance coverage
Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.
Several years ago a Las Vegas man, then a student working part-time jobs with no health benefits, learned he had a severe heart disorder — dilated cardiomyopathy.
This is a condition whose symptoms, including weakness and feeling faint, do not appear right away. It is defined by an enlarged heart that does not efficiently pump blood.
The student, Eric De La Cruz, was in his early 20s when he got the diagnosis. Last week The New York Times recounted his efforts to gain the kind of medical care that could have saved his life.
With private insurance companies known for rejecting people with preexisting conditions, De La Cruz applied for disability benefits through Social Security. As the Times reported, the coverage would have entitled him to receive help through Medicare. He twice applied and was denied.
He turned to Nevada Medicaid and received some coverage. But the program does not cover heart transplants for people older than 20. And that is what he needed.
Earlier this year, when his efforts to find coverage for such a major operation were coming up empty, his sister, former CNN anchor and correspondent Veronica De La Cruz, got involved.
She used her Twitter account to raise money. She succeeded in getting him covered under Medicare. But when she called UCLA’s heart transplant program with the news, she was told that her brother would have to get a secondary insurance policy. All of this was taking time.
She eventually arranged an appointment for her brother at the University of Southern California, where he spent a week on a high-priority transplant list. But he became too sick for the procedure. He died July 4 at age 31.
Veronica De La Cruz is now touring the country to promote health care system reform. She appeared in Las Vegas last week at a town-hall event with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
We hope she can help people facing what her brother faced, who must be asking: Doesn’t anyone in the system care that I’m dying?
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This is nothing more than a repeat of the news stories about this fellow that were published last week. What is new in this story? Nothing, just more grotesque "using" of this poor young man's sad story by the Sun to further its left-wing goals. Shameful, I say.
Who is to say that if we had national health care that if Mr De La Cruz's heart transplant would be covered. You would probably be looking at two to three million dollars for the transplant and the specialized care he would need for the rest of his life. I cannot see the government covering that.
Another day, another liberal story lifted from the NYT. When will the Sun actually write its own stories? Or does the fact that the Sun is delivered inside the LVRJ mean it has no money to do real journalism?
why do i get the feeling that when our retarded republican friends read this story they feel good about themselves...
they feel superior...
they feel like that kid was a loser...
they feel like that kid should have died...
they certainly don't want to pay even a penny to save his life...
sad...
truly sad!!!
All Republicans have insurance, no Republicans have preexisting conditions, and they don't die for lack of medical care.
Talk show host, Sean Insannity, says that health care is available for everyone in the emergency room. Once Sean broke his arm and he painted the doctor's office to pay for his medical care because he didn't have insurance. This person could have got out a brush and painted the entire UCLA campus to pay for his operation.
(The government had the millions to pay for Dick Cheney's heart treatment over the years, at government run Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital, even though Cheney had the money to pay for it himself.
Remember the Metro Cop that had a kid who needed heart surgery? The local government passed a special bill to expand his coverage, since he "capped-out." I didn't year the local Republican bigots complain about that application of "government.")
The story is more about the failure of government healthcare than private insurance.
It is a clear example of how much rationing is occuring and will occur if we are all forced into a government health insurance.
There are some still dubious facts that are not stated in the editorial like how a student that is a "part-time worker" earn enough money to be over the income requirement for Medicaid.
He was under 25 and a student then how come his parents did not carry him under one of their plans.
If he did earn over the Medicaid income requirement then how come he did not buy a college health insurance policy.
It is like he and/or his parents made some bad decisions and want the rest of us feel guilty.
Once again we see that the Sun isn't really a real newspaper, but an echo chamber for the NYTimes. This guy should have just done what illegals do and show up at the emergency room of UMC for free medical care.
He was denied disability benefits through Social Security, then after he got Medicare coverage the system still wouldn't cover his needs.
OK, in this example we see the areas of government-run health care that are broken. So the liberals claim the solution is to ultimately bring everyone under a government-run system. As usual, they are thinking about voting blocks instead of real solutions.
Fix what's wrong with health care but don't destroy what's right with it.
uddeboda-I think you miss the whole point. In your country you only pay $20 for heart transplant but if it costs two million to perform, someone else has to make up the difference. Nothing is free. As a freedom loving American, I do not want to pay taxes so that someone can have an expensive surgery like that. There are many things around I would prefer to spend my money on than someone elses doctor bills. It is called freedom, and I don't think you have much of it in your country.
If this government was in control of all health care I don't think they would spend two million dollars or whatever on a heart transplant. You would be put on a waiting list to die.
Talk to me again when it is your heart condition or your child's heart condition and your lifetime cap runs out on the health insurance you have. Then we'll see who thinks it should be covered or if you'll be willing to go in a corner and die because the rest of us don't want to pay for your expensive surgery.
I guess if it was my son I would do everything I could to keep him alive. I only wish we had more information on what this young man encountered and why they couldn't get him taken care of. What I hear in some of the comments is too bad he had to die at a young age, but why should the government pay to save his life. These sound more like a death panel by the people who are writing some of these opinions. I find it unfortunate that this is what we are hearing about a better health care system from a certain faction in our society. If you have good health insurance it is easy to be against care for those who don't have coverage. I hear a lot of lack of compassion from these people. Of course that is my opinion and I could be wrong.
This was not a failure of Government healthcare. It was a failure of the system. The young man couldn't get health insurance because of his pre-existing condition. Then because of his age and other contributing factors, he didn't qualify for government help.
lvmachead - You helped make my point. Because of certain factors he didn't qualify for government help. Why not fix that? What good would come of putting the rest of us under that broken system?
A sad story to be sure, but this is anecdotal and therefore not good enough to base our policy decisions on. We need real empirical evidence. A Harvard study found that there was no statistically significant relationship between health insurance and life expectancy between states in the US. Meaning there were other factors that play a far more important role than health insurance coverage.
In other words, this tragic story is the exception to the rule, not the rule itself.
Additionally, Americans, on average, are more likely to survive cancer, get dialysis treatment, and are more likely to survive heart attacks than people in universal health care countries like England.
If we had an affordable public insurance plan, available to anyone, or had private insurers not been allowed to deny him insurance because of his pre-existing heart condition, he would have been able to get treatment YEARS earlier. He was an excellent candidate for a transplant and the only thing that prevented that was the INAVAILABILITY OF INSURANCE and the fact that no one would accept him for treatment without it. End of story.
Spin it any other way you want, but the reality is that the legislation coming out of the House this summer, if enacted into law, would have probably allowed Eric to get a heart transplant well before his health became too critical for one.
I'm disheartened to hear so many people twist this story to suit their own political perspective. Whether you support this version or that version of health care reform, can we all agree that too many people are dying because the system doesn't work as well as it should? Eric's story is not uncommon. And, unfortunately, to the person who wants more "empirical evidence", the problem with numbers is that both sides can slice them to say whatever they want. Especially the people who do not have any "anecdotal evidence", like Eric's story, of their own to inform their opinions. Once you go through a medical or insurance disaster like this, I would defy you to say the system just needs a tweak here or there.
MrGambino: Makes you want to wish some "anecdotal" issues on the naysayers doesn't it?
They're time will come. It's inevitable unless there's major change.
So in Utopia no one would would die prematurely due to a curable illness. Do you really think this condition would be achievable through a public health-care system? Would we achieve 100% success. I think you know that can't happen.
So what is acceptable to you? One story like this in 10 years? 100 stories like this a year? In a nation of 300 million, maybe a few thousand a year is acceptable. Would I be very upset if the story is about a loved one of mine? Absolutely. Tragedies happen in life, lots of people will die prematurely and there are lots of horror stories under any system available.
Putting our health care in the hands of a government in which corruption and extreme inefficiency is routine would be a huge mistake. I believe everyone agrees that our system needs reforming. If you really think the government can do an acceptable job at it and if you think the problems will be diminished, you're out of touch with reality.
Wayne: it is "their" not "they're" ( I made the same mistake once with your and you're and got yelled at so I have to call you out).
The guy couldn't get social security, Medicaid, Medicare etc. You guys keep making our cases for us. These ARE GOVERNMENT RUN PROGRAMS. You are so confident that insurance executives are worse care takers of health insurance (motivate by".OMG, profit) than politicians??????
Is that a gamble you are really ready to take? I know you Nanny Staters are but many of us are not.
Failure to provide available, adequate health care to a fellow human being because of cost
is a failure of society.
once again......nowhere in the constitution are Americans ENTITLED to health care.....but the sense of entitlement that has come over this country has some believing that they are entitled....I feel sorry for people like this....but we are not ENTITLED to health care as much as the party of entitlement programs that are bankrupting the government want you to believe
It's not in the Constitution, it's in the Declaration of Independence - Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness - so healthcare is the "Life" part - and maybe applies to the other two also.
Smoke it doesn't say in the Constitution that you have a right to air but you are still sucking wind. Don't be so obtuse.
How is it anybody's right to OWN someone else's time and expertise? I really don't get that health care could be a right. It seems that a real living being must sacrifice his/her time to actually provide care for my owie.
If they are willing to donate or receive some kind of gov help, that's different. It's a program then, not a right.
Farting is a right. Health care, nope.
It seems for some PRO-LIFE doesn't extend past the birth canal and MONEY & SELFISHNESS trumps caring. God does not like ugly and it appears there's a lot of ugly going on here.
I love how some conservatives will say that in America we have the best healthcare system yet in the same breath utter that healthcare is not a right that all should have. Am I the only one who sees this as hypocritical? These same individuals choose to overlook the fact that among all of the industrialized countries, we are the only one that allows our citizens to suffer and die while denying healthcare that is available in most American cities. Our infant-mortality rates are ranked with countries such as Indonesia and Liberia.
Opponents speak of long lines and denied coverage that WOULD occur under a government-run healthcare system while ignoring that there ARE already long lines, ridiculous wait-times and closed doors to countless Americans. If the right to a healthy life should not be part of the American way then how should we define ourselves? Do we really want the world to see us as a country that treats anyone who doesn't have a fat wallet as someone who doesn't deserve to live? In a country where we pride ourselves on being able to make choices, we should not have our quality of life dictated by dollar signs.
To those who don't want to pay for "someone else's expensive healthcare", I say this: Fortunately we all pay for EVERYONE'S safety, and education (i.e. police, fire-fighters, public school teachers, etc.) Should we one day give up those "costly" community benefits as well? If we do, we WILL quickly become a 3rd world country. That is a certainty!