State Insurer Must Cover Cancer Patient’s Surgery
A judge has ordered Blue Shield of California and the state health insurance plan it administers to pay for a potentially lifesaving bone marrow operation for a woman with ovarian cancer, despite the insurer’s assertions that the procedure is experimental, attorneys said Tuesday.
Superior Court Judge Theodore Piatt issued a preliminary injunction Monday ordering the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to pay for the operation, which the woman’s doctors described as an “emergency procedure.” “It’s the only possibility that she has for survival and cure,” said Gary Tysch, the attorney for the cancer patient, Jane Willard, 53, of Claremont.
The judge also ordered Blue Shield, which assesses health benefits for the employees’ retirement system, to approve coverage of the procedure, which involves preserving part of Willard’s bone marrow before high-dosage chemotherapy to treat the cancer and restoring the marrow after the treatment.
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