Insurance Warrior Wages Battle Over Expensive Treatments
Laurie Todd, a 66-year-old former massage therapist, has become a crusader for patients whose insurance companies refuse to pay for a medical treatment. “I’m sitting here in my pajamas making decision-makers who get $20 million a year do the right thing,” she says.
STAT:
An ‘Insurance Warrior’ Fights To Get Pricey Therapies Covered
Her name is passed from one desperate family to another like an amulet. In phone conversations and online chat rooms, she’s mentioned at moments when the devout might call on a patron saint. A baby born with a deformed skull? “Call Laurie.” An impossibly expensive cancer treatment? “Call Laurie.” Laurie Todd isn’t a doctor, or a lawyer, or a hospital chaplain. She’s a 66-year-old former massage therapist. Most of the time, she sounds cheerful and efficient. But if someone tries to pull the wool over her eyes, her voice gets low and a little bit threatening. “Do you know what I do for a living?” she asks. “I’m known as the Insurance Warrior.” (Boodman, 4/25)
Meanwhile, a desperate woman allegedly turns to crime to keep her mother in a nursing home —
The Washington Post:
‘She Didn’t Know What Else To Do': To Keep Mother In Nursing Home, Accomplished Kentucky Woman Turned To Bank Robbery
Melinda Belleville stood outside a courtroom at Fayette District Court in Lexington, Ky., in 2012, shocked by what had just transpired. It seemed like something off television, a plot similar to that of “Breaking Bad.” One of her closest friends — one to whom she felt like a surrogate mother — was in jail, being held on $30,000 bond. “I could never believe in a million years that she would be involved in something like this,” Belleville told the Herald-Leader. “I want everyone to know this is not Crystal Little.” But it was Crystal Little, the same woman who worked for the University of Kentucky’s Office of Research Integrity, an organization obsessed with rules and guidelines in the pursuit of “support[ing] the institution in promoting ethical conduct of research.” The same woman who served as the primary caretaker for her mother, who suffered from multiple sclerosis. (Andrews, 4/27)
