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Decision of a lifetime Insurance companies often reject ‘experimental’ treatments
Law to cut local gov’ts lacks many targets here Program looks for ways to pare Ill. taxing bodies By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com
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Meagan Sunde (left) and her husband, John, make chocolate chip cookies Tuesday at their Huntley home. The Sundes have tallied huge medical bills because their insurance company wouldn’t pay for Meagan’s proton therapy during her battle with cancer last year. By SHAWN SHINNEMAN
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year ago, Meagan Sunde walked into ProCure with a stack of personalized letters. A couple of days prior, her husband, John, had passed along a suggestion from ProCure – the Warrenville center providing Sunde’s lifesaving proton therapy – that she write a personal appeal to their insurance company. This felt, in many ways, like the family’s last chance. They’d already been de-
Have you even been denied payment for treatment by your health insurance company? Vote online at NWHerald.com.
nied coverage for the proton therapy, a pinpoint-accurate radiation treatment appropriate to treat Sunde’s breast cancer because she’d damaged so much tissue with more traditional radiation treatments the past two times she had cancer.
Like so many who struggle with insurance companies, Sunde, 44, of Huntley, had been denied on the grounds that her treatment was “experimental.” Yet some treatments deemed experimental by insurance agencies are thought by doctors to be the safest, surest and sometimes only option – a fact that can cause anything from headaches to a lifetime of debt to the realization that treatment is out of reach. With the help of ProCure, the Sundes had appealed United Healthcare’s original
decision, been denied again and were appealing once more. This time, it seemed that to avoid a $350,000 storm cloud of debt the rest of their lives, it might help if Sunde could make someone handling the papers cry. “They are going to want me to beg for my life,” Sunde remembered thinking when she heard John’s suggestion last August. “I told John ... ‘I can’t do this.’” Determined, she sent an email to friends for help, and
A new law that allows the DuPage County Board to ax a handful of its 400 units of government would have less of an impact in McHenry County if its board was likewise empowered. Senate Bill 494, which Gov. Pat Quinn called a pilot program when he signed it Aug. 2, authorizes the DuPage County Board to eliminate 13 units of government that meet a strict set of criteria. If the same law were applied to McHenry County, the County Board realistically could eliminate four of the 140 or so public bodies that can levy property taxes, an analysis of county records shows. They include the Lake in the Hills Sanitary District, the Crystal Lake Rural Fire District and the Greenwood and Hebron drainage districts. The drainage districts do not even levy a tax. But supporters of paring the state’s 7,000 units of government see the new bill as a baby step that could be expanded if and when state lawmakers give the power to other county boards. The law comes as a state-appointed Local Government Consolidation
“I want to see what happens with [DuPage] County, using it as the experiment. I’m all for expanding this so we can get more taxing bodies to end.” State Rep. Jack Franks D-Marengo
See EXPERIMENTAL, page A9 See NEW LAW, page A9
Possible 2016 presidential hopefuls mask intentions By CALVIN WOODWARD The Associated Press WASHINGTON – Get your face on TV and write a book: Check. Start meeting the big money people: Check. Visit Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina – Israel, too: Check. Deny any of this has to do with running for president: Check.
For politicians planning or tempted to run for the presidency in 2016, the to-do list is formidable. What’s striking is how methodically most of them are plowing through it while they pretend nothing of the sort is going on. Somehow, it has been decreed that politicians who fancy themselves presidential timber must
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wear a veil concealing the nakedness of their ambition. They must let the contours show through, however – more and more over time – while hoping everyone doesn’t tire of the tease. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio,
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Names to know Possible contenders for a presidential nomination: For the Democrats, Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. For the Republicans, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
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SONG INSPIRES FAITH CONFERENCE The song “Healing Rain” by Christian recording artist Michael W. Smith has inspired an upcoming conference in Johnsburg. Organizers are gathering speakers and hoping to attract a large crowd to Healing Rain Conference 2013, scheduled from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sept. 7 at Johnsburg Middle School, 2220 W. Church St., Johnsburg. For more, see Planit Style, page 6.
CARY: Warriors’ Watch Riders welcome Cary man home from Afghanistan on his birthday. Local&Region, B1 Vol. 28, Issue 230
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among others, are hewing closely to the scripted chores of soonto-runs. Hillary Rodham Clinton and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are among those coming out with a book, almost a perquisite these days, while otherwise diverting from the usual path of
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