Vacant hospital and other medically necessary facilities and treatments often are left unfunded by insurance conglomerates.

On the day that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was brutally murdered in New York City, I received a letter from my insurance company. 

About a month ago, and out of the clear blue sky, we learned that my son has a rare and particularly aggressive type of pediatric cancer. There is a tennis ball-sized tumor growing rapidly on the left side of his ribcage that will kill him if we don’t act quickly. To treat it, our doctors said, we need to know what it is, so our oncology team promptly ordered a series of genetic tests that would help identify both the type of cancer and the most effective way to cure it.

Our insurance company, however, didn’t agree.  The tests our doctors needed were not “medically necessary” and, therefore, wouldn’t be covered. So while we were still wrapping our heads around a life-or-death medical diagnosis for our first-born son, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts was dropping a denial-of-coverage letter for a set of tests whose cost, according to our doctor, often runs into the five figures. I was livid, and part of my rage boiled over onto UnitedHealthcare, which reportedly denies fully one third of the claims it receives.

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In the days following Thompson’s death,........

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