Uninsured cancer survivor turns medication into jewelry to pay off debt

[Liberal_in_LA]

Cancer survivor turns medication into jewelry

Susan Braig, a 61-year-old Altadena cancer survivor, takes old pharmaceutical pills and tablets and mounts them on costume jewelry to create colorful necklaces, pendants, earrings and tiaras that she sells. It's a way to help pay off her medical debt.

(pic from http://farm5.static.flickr.com)

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"I bought my first round of medicine and it cost $500 out of my own pocket," she said. "I looked at the drugstore receipt and then at the little pills and wondered if they were precious gems."

It turned out they were precious in more ways than one.

Seven years after beginning treatment, Braig is cancer-free. And she is using expensive unused cancer-fighting pills in jewelry that she sells to defray unpaid treatment costs.

"I'm deeply in debt because I was underinsured," she said. Her private health insurance did not kick in until she had paid a yearly $1,000 deductible and $2,500 in co-pays, and it did not cover the cost of outpatient care, which is what most of the lengthy treatment was.

This month, she lost her private insurance altogether. "I went from underinsured to uninsured," she said with a grim smile.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pill-art-20110329,0,1787689.story

[DeSwiss]

1. I'll be waiting.....

...for the news report where she's been arrested for illegally selling prescription drugs.

- K&R

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. And the people who gave her their prescribed drugs might be in trouble.

[grilled onions]

2. Or For the Drug Companies...

asking for their cut since she is using THEIR pills!

[SoCalDem]

4. "...underinsured to uninsured..." to uninsurable

at a cost that is affordable by normal humans..:(