If you read yesterday’s post, you know our dilemma. If not, let me give you a brief synopsis of our situation. James was diagnosed with infantile spasms, which are a type of seizure in babies. The neurologist prescribed ACTH, which is supposedly the best drug to treat infantile spasms. Unfortunately, Blue Cross Blue Shield does not want to pay the $74,000 that Walgreens is charging for the medication because it exceeds the cap on what they will pay for prescriptions. Stacy called Blue Cross Blue Shield to see if there was anything they (or we) could do to get this approved. The lady she spoke with said that she would make some phone calls and see what she could do.
While we wait to hear back from Blue Cross Blue Shield, Stacy and I have been discussing ways to come up with the $74,000 in the event that we are unable to get it through insurance. The movie “John Q” starring Denzel Washington comes to mind. If you haven’t seen it, Denzel’s character, John Q, and his wife have a son who has an enlarged heart and needs a heart transplant or he will die. Their insurance company will not cover the cost of the transplant, which is around $250,000. Hospital administrators offered them a couple of options: take their son home, make him comfortable, and wait for him to die; or pay for the transplant themselves. They opted for the second option and were then informed that the hospital requires a 30% down payment, or $75,000, before they can put their son on the transplant list. They set out to try to raise the $75,000 needed for the down payment, selling their possessions, and taking donations from friends, coworkers, and their church. Unfortunately, they were coming up short and the hospital decided to discharge their son and send him home to die. Not wanting to accept that fate for his son, and not seeing any other options, John Q took the cardiologist and a few patients hostage in the hospital’s emergency room. Spoiler alert…in the end, he gets arrested, but his son got a new heart. If backed into a corner with no other options, what would you do if you were in that situation? I don’t think I have it in me to go to that extreme, but we’d do anything for our kids, right? We’ll leave a John Q scenario as our last option.
So how else can we come up with the $74,000 needed for ACTH? We don’t have that kind of money sitting in the bank. We don’t have much to sell, surely not $74,000 worth. Thanks to the financial crisis, we don’t have enough equity in our condo to take out a loan to pay for the medicine. I could get a second job, but it would take years to come up with that kind of money and we kinda need it right now. So, what the hell are our options?
Maybe if we found 74,000 people to each give us $1. Could that be a possibility? I guess there is only one way to find out. As much as we hate asking for handouts, we don’t know what else to do so we have setup a PayPal account just for James. If you have a dollar or two to spare, click here. You can make a donation either from your own PayPal account, or you can use a debit or credit card. We appreciate anything you are able to spare. Thank you.
