When my son, Caden, was five years old, he was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. It was the scariest and worst day of my life. The day Caden was diagnosed, there was no hope.<\/p>\n
A few months later, I got a call asking if Caden would be one of 12 boys for a first-of-its-kind treatment for the disease. We went from despair to hopeful overnight.For the last five years, the progression of Caden\u2019s disease has slowed due to this breakthrough treatment \u2013 Exondys 51 \u2013 which the FDA approved in late 2016. The drug helps his body make dystrophin, which is necessary for his muscles to function.<\/p>\n
Despite Caden playing a key role in the development of this drug, our insurance company, Anthem BlueCross BlueShield, is now refusing to acknowledge its approval.<\/strong> Instead, the company is weaseling out of coverage by calling it \u201cinvestigational\u201d and \u201cexperimental.\u201d I have helped my son fight this horrific disease for five years and I won\u2019t let a greedy and malicious insurance company take away a drug that has changed his life. The reason insurance exists in the first place, is to cover health care for patients. Anthem should not be allowed to take this drug away from my son.<\/p>\n Please sign my petition and send a message to Anthem that Caden doesn\u2019t deserve to be harmed by his insurance company.<\/strong> He\u2019s a young boy who has already been through a lot. Caden’s daily struggles aren’t just physical, they are emotional too. Teenage hormones along with having to deal with the emotional repercussions of living with this disease have taken a toll.<\/p>\n When our initial claim was sent in for approval, Anthem didn’t even have a clinical expert or even a neurologist on the deciding panel (I believe it was a Rheumotoligist, who won\u2019t know anything about muscular dystrophy or this treatment). Caden’s doctor demanded a neurologist be in the panel and in the denial letter they stated a neurologist was on that panel but they refused to provide evidence to this end. Highlighting their ignorance, they didn\u2019t even refer to the disease correctly (calling it “Duchenne Dystrophy\u201d instead of \u201cDuchenne Muscular Dystrophy\u201d).<\/strong> Since then, they Anthem has ignored us.\u00a0 They have refused to return my calls or e-mails. They\u2019re pretending we don\u2019t exist.My son\u2019s life is at stake and Anthem will be liable. I\u2019m asking Anthem\u2019s CEO, Joseph Swedish, to look in the mirror and ask if the company is willing accept this.<\/p>\n Please consider signing my petition and share with everyone you know. I\u2019ve promised Caden that we will beat this.<\/p>\n My heartfelt thanks for your time and support.<\/p>\n Beth Perez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","petition_category":[100],"petition_topics":[101],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/charitablehumans.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/petition\/4335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/charitablehumans.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/petition"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/charitablehumans.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/petition"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/charitablehumans.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/charitablehumans.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/charitablehumans.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/charitablehumans.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"petition_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/charitablehumans.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/petition_category?post=4335"},{"taxonomy":"petition_topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/charitablehumans.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/petition_topics?post=4335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}