The Rest of the Story

Moore: Man dies of kidney cancer because insurance company won't pay for bone marrow transplant.

Reality: No insurer - including the governments in Canada, Britain, France and Cuba pays for the procedure. Reason: Clinical trials show it doesn't work.

The widow of Tracy Pierce, the man who died from end-stage renal cell carcinoma, discussed in SiCKO how her late husband was denied numerous treatments for his cancer.  Presumably, his oncologist wanted to experiment with cancer therapies not commonly used (or approved) to treat his type of cancer.  Many of the newest therapies are very expensive - a regimen can cost $50,000 - yet have little clinical evidence to suggest a benefit against a cancer they were never proven to treat.

The last treatment Tracy Pierce's health insurer refused to cover was a bone marrow transplant.  The reason identified was that bone marrow transplant in kidney cancer patients is experimental.  There is a stage II clinical trial that is currently in progress, but no evidence of any health insurer routinely covering this type of procedure, which runs about $250,000. 

Although a small study of bone marrow transplants in 19 kidney cancer patients (from 1999) showed promise, it has not become mainstream due to lack of evidence on which circumstances transplants might have a positive effect.  In fact, one of the serious side effects in some patients is a condition where the immune system attacks the patient (rather the cancer). 

The American health care system treats serious diseases more aggressively than national health systems.  The health care systems in Canada, Britain and France would undoubtedly not routinely cover this experimental therapy either.

The following URL explains Cigna's policy of not covering this type of procedure.  It contains a short review of the literature and explains the background and many of the risks:

http://www.cigna.com/customer_care/healthcare...