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ABC News
Sept. 16, 2009
"These guys are just playing with my life."
Witness makes plea during hearing: "I need you people to let me be a daddy."
Erinn Ackley still remembers her father's words as he struggled with an aggressive form of cancer in 2006. Bill Ackley had health insurance through his job as a public school teacher. But as his life hung in the balance, his insurance company questioned the necessity of a potentially life-saving treatment doctors prescribed and, for a time, refused to pay.
After months of appeals to overcome the "bureaucratic roadblocks," Ackley finally received approval for the treatment he sought. But to his daughter Erinn, the delay just might have cost her father his life.
"Dad was finally transplanted 126 days after the first transplant request [but] he never returned home," said Ackley. "He passed away at the age of 57, leaving a grieving widow and daughter, and only one grandchild born 17 months later, that he will never play with."
"When a loved one is going through a life or death struggle, you can hear the clock ticking every minute," she said.
Ackley's story was one of several accounts shared with members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday of the often heart-wrenching struggles some Americans face in dealing with the "private health insurance bureaucracy."
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