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<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t matter that Eric Tennant\u2019s oncologist had recommended the medication to shrink his tumors. <\/p>\n
The patient\u2019s health insurance allegedly stood in the way \u2014 until it was too late.<\/p>\n
In early 2025, after more than two years of chemotherapy that hollowed him out from the inside, the frail 58-year-old was deemed a good candidate for histotripsy, a new treatment that could target the tumors in his liver with ultrasound waves instead of surgery.<\/p>\n
Tennant\u2019s wife, Rebecca, had heard of histotripsy and brought the idea to her husband\u2019s doctor. There was a relatively narrow window in which he could receive the treatment, and his medical team was ready to start.<\/p>\n But suddenly Tennant\u2019s doctors were handicapped: His insurance had denied the request, noting in the paperwork that the potentially life-saving treatment was \u201cnot medically necessary,\u201d per NBC News and KFF Health News<\/a>.<\/p>\n Multiple rounds of appeals were unsuccessful. Out-of-pocket costs for the Tennant family \u2014\u00a0which included Eric, his wife and their two grown children \u2014 would have been around $50,000.<\/p>\n Tennant, a mining safety instructor from Bridgeport, West Virginia, was put on hospice last year and died in September.<\/p>\n \u201cHe wasn\u2019t afraid to die, but he didn\u2019t want to die,\u201d Rebecca told KFF. \u201cAnd you could tell the last day that he was fighting it big time.\u201d<\/p>\n