Back in September, I wrote about a 2-year-old Bakersfield boy named Garrett Hutchins, who is suffering from brain cancer. His parents brought him to City of Hope, near Los Angeles, and doctors there suggested a double auto-transplant -- but the family insurance company declined to pay for it, citing a policy against covering case trials. That was bad enough, but then the family learned that if they'd been on Medi-Cal instead of private insurance, the experimental treatment would have been covered.
Here's that entire column.
Well, I have an update from Garrett's mom, Katie Hutchins:
Hi Robert,
I just thought you may be interested in an update. Our hospital applied for authorization to have Garrett enroll in the antibody case trial that I had mentioned before. We were fully prepared for a denial - I had even researched the appeal process and was ready to go. Well, they *approved* it, even though it's still a case trial. !!!
Who knows if the article had any influence, but I would like to believe it at least got people thinking.
Thank you again for your help.
-Katie Hutchins
That's great news and, yes, I have to admit it feels good to know it's possible I had something to do with this kid getting treatment that could save his life. Katie says Garrett had been improving anyway. In any case, I'm planning to show up at the kid's sixth-grade graduation in 10 years, if they let me in the building.
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