Oct 25, 2017 4 min read

It’s long been an article of faith that Americans will never accept a single-payer health care system like the ones they have in Canada or Britain. We’re too individualistic, the thinking goes, too distrustful of government, too suspicious of ideas that have the whiff of Europe about them, too concerned that a single-payer plan would make our hospitals and doctor’s offices as soul-deadening as a license bureau.

Then there is the fact that 157 million Americans get health insurance through their employer, and an additional 19 million have Medicare Advantage plans. Many find these plans to be comprehensive and more than satisfactory. Getting these folks to abandon these options and pay more taxes at the same time would be a hard lift, to say the least.

Still, if you want to understand why support for a single-payer plan is picking up steam in some polls, read a story by Barbara S. Miller that appeared in the Tuesday edition of the Observer-Reporter. It outlines a recent decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that has created a precedent in insurance law, and it’s based on the travails of a Monongahela woman who died of cancer in 2010 after an insurer tried to get out of paying promised benefits.

To recap, LeAnn Rancosky, a Monongahela postal worker, purchased a supplemental “dread disease” policy from the insurer Conseco in 1992 due to a family history of ovarian cancer. The policy was designed to cover living expenses like housekeeping, child care or cancer-related travel costs in the event Rancosky was diagnosed with cancer. Under the terms of the policy, if Rancosky remained cancer-free until age 70, she would have been eligible for a refund of the payments she had been making through payroll deductions.

Unfortunately, Rancosky was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2003, when she was just 44. The policy stated she no longer had to make payments if she was disabled by cancer for at least 90 days. According to Rancosky’s attorney, she did not make a payment 91 days from the point of her diagnosis. However, Conseco wanted to calculate it from the point of her visit to an oncologist. Conseco viewed this as a lapse in payments and, while the company made payments in 2004 and 2005, it denied coverage when Rancosky’s cancer returned in 2006.

Rancosky sued, and her survivors were awarded $31,144 by a jury in Washington County Court, three years after she died at age 51. A related case was lost in a nonjury trial. The state Supreme Court looked at the standard of what constitutes bad faith by an insurance provider and disagreed with the insurance company that there needed to be evidence of actual malice, that they were singling out Rancosky out of personal animus. The case will now be sent back to Washington County Court.

Three years before her death, Rancosky wrote the following: “I am battling cancer. I shouldn’t have to battle an insurance company (that) doesn’t honor their contracts. I have filled out every form you sent me, some twice. I feel my cancer insurance coverage has been canceled in error and believe my policy should be reinstated.”

It goes without saying that confronting cancer, or any other potentially fatal disease, is one of the most traumatic ordeals a person can endure, particularly at a relatively young age. All of your plans and expectations for how the rest of your life will unfold are upended. The anguish of having your life hang in the balance cannot be made any better by insurance companies denying coverage based on what appear to be technicalities.

Like it or not, cases like Rancosky’s create single-payer supporters.