Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Tried to Kill My Friend

Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina just told a patient with a progressive neurodegenerative disease that her already-approved, externally-reviewed, medically-necessary IVIG infusion needed another review.

48 hours before her scheduled treatment.

Let me be clear about what happened here.

In December 2024, an independent external reviewer overturned BCBSNC's denial. Medical necessity was established. The documentation exists. Her physicians agreed. The reviewers agreed. She received stabilizing infusions throughout 2025.

And then 2026 arrived, and Blue Cross decided to relitigate settled science.

This time they called it a "site review." Translation: they wanted to push her out of the hospital setting and into a lower-cost infusion center. For a patient with documented life-threatening hypersensitivity reactions. For a patient who requires immediate access to emergency intervention during infusions.

This is not utilization management. This is the deliberate transfer of medical risk from the insurer to the patient.

Sally Nix did what no patient should ever have to do. She wrote a letter to the CEO and Medical Director laying out the clinical facts, the legal exposure, and the sheer indefensibility of their position. She made noise. She applied pressure. She fought for her own survival while her body was already fighting a disease that does not pause for prior authorization.

And guess what? She got approved.

Not because the medical facts changed. The medical facts never changed. She got approved because she knew how to fight back and refused to disappear quietly into the denial machine.

That is the system working exactly as designed. Deny first. Delay second. Hope patients give up, get sicker, or die before the appeal goes through. And when someone fights back with receipts and refuses to fold, suddenly the authorization materializes.

How many patients don't have Sally's knowledge? Her stamina? Her ability to write a letter that makes a legal department sweat?

Those patients deteriorate. Those patients lose function. Those patients die waiting for permission to live.

BCBSNC knows the consequences of IVIG interruption. Reloading doses. Increased monitoring. Emergency interventions. Higher costs for everyone. They have the data. They made the calculation anyway.

This is not a bug. This is the business model.

Sally is in the infusion chair right now. She won this round. But she will have to fight again next year. And the year after that. And every year until the system decides her life is worth less than the cost of treatment.

No patient should have to survive their disease AND their insurance company.

2026 is the Year of the Patient. The sick shall inherit the ballot.

If this makes you angry, good. Stay angry. Then do something with it.

ORIGINAL POST ➡️ https://emz.ee/4blbg5B

#WeThePatients #YearOfThePatient