What would you want after you paid for your own medical care, lost your family, income and home because Nationwide Insurance played the insurance denial game.  What compensation would you want for your children.  How has the divorce and financial hardships affected them?  How will it affect their lives and the lives of their families. How would you feel if you were beaten with money and power for 16 years.  Would you send me your estimate of what 16 years lost life is. While you're at it, please include future figures too.  What would you want?

The two level Artificial Disc procedure is about as expensive as traditional spinal fusion.  Dr. James Yue gave me a one time deal.  I was the last of 65 patients admitted to Yale New Haven, CT Orthopedic FDA trial of the procedure.  Actually the trial was basically closed, but the participating Doctors are allowed to continue a few surgeries to keep practice and staff.   And the cost was so significant savings because the Pro-Disc manufacturer gives the hardware free.  The only fee is the hospital, doctors and continuing care.  A 50% discount and in this case, a one time offer that turned out limited to a weekend, but we didn't know it at the time.  Two days after my procedure Pro-Disc closed the trial entirely and there were no more surgeries until the Pro-Disc FDA approval was final in late 2005. 

A chapter would be written on just what is necessary to prepare for a procedure such as this.  In a two years I went from expecting the least invasive most successful treatment to the most invasive least likely to succeed procedure.  They call it back surgery.  Then why do they go in from the front?  Enough said.

This should give you an idea of the price of the surgery and the cost.  As Nationwide ignored the Workers Compensation Commissioners suggestion to pay, I went looking for cash.  Did you expect me to have insurance after not being able to work for 10 years?  The cost of surgery was every dollar I had.  Yale University (the doctors part) did a very nice thing.  They bent the rules and financed the balance of my childrens' savings account so I did not have to cash what little I had saved for them.

This brings us to what I want.  I want everything Nationwide Insurance has.  They can keep the soap dishes and toilet paper. 

I was so sick and the nerves had grown into the lower discs in my back which generated all the pain.  This is not new science to neurosurgeons at all.  It is a shame the doctors lied to me all these years.  The truth of my injury came out when I stopped telling them I was a Workers Compensation patient.  Actually, when you think about the fact Nationwide was not paying, I was not a Comp patient.  Bristol Hospital, Bristol Connecticut has some sharp cookies in their Pain Management Clinic.  The unit was one of the first of it's kind.  I was promptly and professionally diagnosed.  They did such an excellent job that Dr. Yue did not have to repeat their tests. 

The pathology was so bad, that the morning Dr. Yue visited me and checked my feet for feeling, he was happy to find I had some (feeling).  He told me the procedure took twice as long, 5 hrs. because a neurology team had to assist because of the in-grown nerve damage.  Here is the killer.  He said if he knew the week before how bad I was, he would have had reservations about helping me. 

I want to hear your story of Insurance Abuse.  Email me.  I want Paybilly to go nationally as "We're mad as Hell, and not going to take it anymore"!

Need your ideas and support email me .