Disability by Denial: Blue Cross Rejects Critical Surgery for Orange County ICU Nurse

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee have put out a call to flood to flood Blue Cross' office with calls and faxes, in an urgent appeal to the insurance company to overturn its decision and save the health of their colleague. They will be joined in the effort by other patients, friends, and family of Kutcher from Orange County, as well as advocates for the kind of "Medicare for all" healthcare that would end the ability of health insurance corporations like Blue Cross from making life-and-death decisions like this one.

Kutcher has degenerative disc disease — related to her years of nursing — and her neurosurgeon recommends an artificial disc to solve the problem, and allow her to return to work as a critical care nurse. Calling the procedure "investigational," despite the FDA’s approval of it, Blue Cross is instead pushing a different high-risk procedure that will fuse two of her discs together. She is scheduled once again for the surgery on March 11 and plans to go through with it even if it means paying out of pocket and losing her home.