Video Games Man™ Brandon Boyer has cancer, and his insurance company absolutely screwed him over.
Look, I’ll just leave the pertinent aspects of the story below so you feel good about donating, but the quick version is as follows: Brandon has recently been diagnosed with cancer, and had surgery almost immediately after the diagnosis. Due to some crappy fine print, Brandon currently owes his aggressively shitty insurance company $110,000.
health insurance company actively & aggressively works to ruin me financially, sends a fucking candy bar to say sorry pic.twitter.com/9El4prGKjT
— Brandon Boyer (@brandonnn) February 28, 2014
You can donate and read Brandon’s story here. This amazing industry has already raised over $47,000 $60,000 dollars in three days, and I know we can do better. The games industry has two sides; for all the awful things we do, we also have an incredible capacity for kindness. Let’s keep the latter trend going as we attempt to stomp out the former.
I was really proud of myself for doing the correct, adult thing and getting my own health insurance last year, and apparently in the nick of time: after a few confusing, stressful months — which I laid out in much greater detail over here — I was diagnosed with cancer & more or less immediately taken into surgery, where they removed a few feet of my small intestine & a section of my liver.
[…]
It wasn’t until early this year that I dug further and realized what was actually happening: Humana had decided at the end of the year to deny all of my claims and left me with a hundred-thousand dollars worth of bills. […] Patient Advocate took a look at the letter and were super candid: the chances for a successful appeal were basically zero.
The silver lining is that I’m still alive & I’m back on my feet & my health is stable for now — I get regular monthly treatment meant to slow my decline, and my first post-surgery scan came back with essentially good news — and also that the support I’ve had throughout all of this has been incredible.
That support may include friends & colleagues also coming together outside this campaign to help get me through this, and any additional assistance outside my immediate needs will be put into the cost of that on-going treatment — as you might expect, from now on, it costs me many, many thousands of dollars more per year just to stay alive.
And, you know, this is just the first time I’ve been dashed against the rocks on my way out to sea. There will come a time, hopefully not too soon, when things will get more serious again, and knowing I’ve got a bedrock of support is the most important thing in carrying through those tough times, so my thanks to everyone that has, will or can help in any way.
