Arijit Guha, Cancer Patient, Wins Twitter War Against Aetna Insurance
Arijit Guha, Cancer Patient, Wins Twitter War Against Aetna Insurance
Posted: 07/31/2012 2:20 pm Updated: 08/02/2012 1:36 pm
Arijit Guha's battle against Stage 4 colon cancer is far from over but the Arizona State University graduate student can at least savor winning a Twitter war that shamed the insurance company that dropped his coverage into paying for his care.
Before the CEO of Aetna agreed to waive a lifetime limit on coverage, Guha, a recently married 31-year-old doctoral candidate studying sustainability, sought to sustain his chemotherapy treatments by selling humorous T-shirts and raffling celebrity donations on a website called Poop Strong.
“My friend once said what I’m doing seems like the world’s most important bake sale,” Guha told The Washington Post. “It sometimes feels like this weird joke, that I’m selling T-shirts to pay for chemotherapy.”
It was no joke when Guha started suffering severe stomach pains while on a trip to visit family in India in early 2011. When he returned, he learned he had advanced colon cancer. His student health plan paid for several surgeries but in less than a year, the $11,000-a-piece chemotherapy sessions and other treatments hit up against his policy's $300,000 lifetime limit for coverage.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/31/arijit-guha-cancer-patient_n_1724478.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003#slide=more242477
