An uninsured adult family member was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin's
lymphoma and has begun ABVD chemotherapy. Due to the cyclical nature
of his work, he receives large commissions then receives nothing for
long periods of time. Currently, he has enough money to pay all of his
living expenses for the 12 - 18 months, but after that he will be out
of money if he is unable to continue working during treatment.

Having said that, we fear he will be denied any form of financial aid
he applies for due to his current liquidity.

What options are available for him to pay for this debt that we expect
will be close to $150,000 ($40,000 hospital bill, the rest for
chemotherapy)?

Is any insurance available to him that will cover the costs of
treatment even though he has already been diagnosed?

He lives in Georgia. Would moving to a state with a high risk health
insurance pool be a viable option to cover the costs of treatment?

Personal loans and a second mortgage are options we have already
looked in to and we consider to be worst-case scenarios.

Note: I will pay up to $200 for the answers to these questions based
on the quality of response and how much money he can be saved.

Please try

http://www.rxassist.org/

http://oncolink.org/experts/article.cfm?c=4&s=33&ss=113&id=1084

Hi Kingdrew,

Can the patient in question travel overseas? You will surely save a
lot of money and receive world class care. Take a look at some of the
options:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/healthcare/medicaltourism.html

An acquaintence of mine had a heart problem attended to at Escorts
hospital in India (http://www.escortshospital.com/) and he had the
nicest things to say about the quality of care and the cost benefit.

Good luck.

Hi kingdrew,

northernlionsfan-ga gave an excellent resource with RXassist, below. I
happen to know that the income caps for both assistance and
reimbursement programs are very high. If your family member's tax
return averages this income out to anywhere below say $75K a year, it
would be well worth the time and effort to look into these programs. I
received assistance for a drug about 15 years ago, and the cap was
$50K a year! And that is for a drug that was not all that expensive.
Since then I have searched for programs for a couple friends and
answered a Question here about Patient Assistance Programs, all the
caps were higher.

To locate a specific program, I need the exact drug name. I found this:

ABVD Chemotherapy
http://www.cancerbacup.org.uk/Treatments/Chemotherapy/Combinationregimes/ABVDregime

and this:

Patient Assistance Programs 
http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/InSite?page=md-rr-16

Since there are 4 drugs, the assistance programs might be elusive to
track down. I would start with the Doctor who may know of a program
for the exact mixture of drugs. Since they are offered by the
manufacturers, if the 4 drugs are made by different companies, it
might be difficult, but I urge you to check further.

I also think applehead77-ga's advice of out-of-the-country care is
worthy of exploration.

On a somber note, if no assistance is available, he should get the
treatment and worry about how to live later. At least he will be
alive.

Correction:

northernlionsfan-ga gave an excellent resource with RXassist, ABOVE. 

[originally started a request for clarification, which would have
placed this comment above]

Sorry for the confusion.

* Most insurance policies have Pre-Exist clauses, but there are a few
that don't. I have a job at a major health insurer, so my policy is
better than most- my policy started the day I came to work- no
pre-exist clause, no need to produce a certificate of prior coverage,
no questions asked about health history.

* Even if you can't find health insurance without a pre-ex clause, it
might be worthwhile anyway for the kind of long term treatment that
seems to be involved. Most of our policies have a 12 month "sunset"
after which we start paying for any excluded pre-existing condition.
Also consider that other conditions might present themselves.