An ICU Doctor Checked His Insurance Portal Every Day While His Daughter Was Dying Of Cancer. He Was Terrified They Would Kick Her Off.
Dr. Hesham Hassaballa is a pulmonary critical care physician. Board certified four times over. 20 years in the ICU. He has watched thousands of people fight for their lives.
And when his own daughter was getting chemotherapy, he logged into his insurance account daily to make sure they had not dropped her. A physician. In the system. Earning a good living. Still terrified of financial ruin because his child got sick.
And that is why American Healthcare isn't broken. It was built this way and working perfectly be design.
I sat down with him on his podcast Healthcare Musings and we went deep. Two fathers. One who lost his daughter to cancer. One who almost lost everything to brain cancer at 21. Both of us staring at the same broken machine from different angles.
He told me about getting six figure hospital bills every week of chemo. About fighting to get claims rebilled under a different doctor's name because the new oncologist was not credentialed yet. About the year after his daughter died when he was still drowning in paperwork and appeals while grieving.
I told him the truth. 80% of appeals succeed. 0.2% of denials get appealed. The industry is betting on your exhaustion. Denial is the business model. $30 billion a year wasted on unnecessary denials and the reclamation of those denials. That is not inefficiency. That is strategy.
He asked what physicians can do. I told him the same thing I tell everyone. Join the movement. You do not have to be a patient to be pissed at healthcare. You do not have to be dying to demand better. Patients do not want their doctors to be suicidal. Doctors do not want their patients to go bankrupt.
We are on the same side. We just never organized together before.
My book We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America's Healthcare Nightmare drops May 19th from Wiley. Pre order it. Read it. Get angry. Then do something with that anger.
Welcome to 2026: The Year of the Patient where the sick shall inherit the ballot.
If this hits home, drop your horror story in the comments and tell me where you have seen it happen. How about a rage repost? Or tag a former colleague just for fun. Every impression pushes this in front of more people who deal with the same mess.
Are you new here? My condolences and my thanks. Follow along and stay loud with the rest of us. More voices means more pressure on a system that counts on silence.
EPISODE LINK IN COMMENTS ⬇️
Pre-Order my book We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America's Healthcare Nightmare ➡️ https://emz.ee/book
EPISODE ➡️ https://www.healthcaremusings.com/we-the-patients-are-really-pissed-off-my-conversation-with-matthew-zachary/
