All About Money

Mary was an accountant, working for one of the large national accounting firms. She loved her job and never took a sick day in the 13 years she had been with the company. She had not even bothered to find a doctor who accepted her insurance plan. At age 35 Mary was diagnosed with Lupus, a disease in which the immune system attacks healthy tissue. Her disease progressed rapidly and soon she was unable to work. Several visits to her doctors, a seizure which sent her to the emergency room, high doses of expensive medications, a requirement for CAT scans every six weeks to monitor her disease resulted in mounting bills that her insurance company began to question and eventually stopped paying. Although lupus can be fatal, many people who have it live a normal life span, according to the Lupus Foundation of America. The disease is usually managed with appropriate medication. However, when insurance companies refuse to pay and individuals deplete their own resources, the medications and the treatments stop.

Mary was a fiercely proud woman. When the payments stopped, she stopped seeing her doctors and stopped getting tests that would monitor her disease and prevent even more insidious events. She turned to the government for assistance but the State Medicaid bureaucracy was merely another maze to wander through which was overwhelming to Mary. She became depressed and refused to seek further assistance. Two years after her diagnosis, Mary died of complications.