Cancer patient's fight to get authorization for treatment recommended by his doctor
In our series 'The Cost of Denial,' NBC News' Erin McLaughlin reports on a West Virginia family's appeal after appeal to get insurance coverage for a treatment called histotripsy which uses ultrasound waves to target tumors in the liver.
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NBC News
18 hours ago
- NBC News
Venezuelan who had rare, major surgery was deported to El Salvador prison, and his family has no idea how he is
Even before her son was summarily locked up in a Salvadoran prison and cut off from contact with the outside world, Mariela Villamizar was worried about his health. Wladimir Vera Villamizar, a 33-year-old welder from western Venezuela, had recovered from a tuberculosis infection that left severe scarring in his right lung, according to his family and medical records reviewed by NBC News. His health was in decline when he arrived in the United States as an asylum-seeker last year and got progressively worse during the months he spent in immigration detention, his mother said. In January, his family said, after Vera had been released with an ankle monitor, he was rushed to the E.R. According to medical records, he underwent an emergency right pneumonectomy — the total removal of his right lung. 'The operation took over five hours,' his mother told NBC News from her home in Venezuela. 'God worked a miracle, and he came out OK, but the recovery was not what he expected.' About two weeks after the surgery and days after President Donald Trump took office, Vera was detained once again, according to his family. After President Trump invoked emergency wartime powers in March to deport more than 200 Venezuelan men to the supermax prison in El Salvador known as the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism, or CECOT, Vera's name turned up on a list of deportees leaked to CBS News. 'Since the last time I spoke to him on March 13, I've gotten no information about him,' Villamizar's mother said. 'I don't know how he's doing, what condition his health is in, how they're holding him. Whether he's received any medical attention — or if they even have that over there in El Salvador. I just don't know.' Because every prisoner at CECOT is held strictly incommunicado, with zero access to lawyers or loved ones, nothing is known about whether Vera is receiving any treatment. The men were deported to CECOT under a presidential order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law meant to be used in wartime that allows for the suspension of certain due process rights for noncitizens from hostile nations. The legality of the move is the subject of multiple strands of high-stakes litigation in the federal courts. In a statement to NBC News, Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security's Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, said that Vera 'self-admitted to spending 7 years in prison on murder charges in Venezuela' and is a 'member of Tren de Aragua, one of the most violent ruthless terrorist gangs on planet earth.' Mariela Villamizar, Vera's mother, acknowledged that Vera had served a 7-year prison sentence in Venezuela for homicide, but said this sentence was served over a false accusation and denied that her son was ever a member of Tren de Aragua. Constitutional rights attorneys in the U.S. say the past criminal histories of the men sent to CECOT are irrelevant to their due process rights. 'The fact that he had a prior criminal conviction can in no way deprive him of his procedural rights, including the right not to be sent to his potential death in a third country,' said Baher Azmy, Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. 'But for this administration, the fact of a prior criminal conviction is enough to sweep away any legal protections for any person in this country.' On the question of Vera's medical condition, McLaughlin said: 'This criminal illegal alien was in good health at the time of his deportation to El Salvador,' and referred questions about his current medical care at CECOT to the U.S. State Department. The State Department referred the inquiry back to the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security would not comment on Vera's case or confirm whether he is, in fact, at CECOT. Vera's is one of hundreds of Venezuelan families who have been clamoring for more than 100 days for proof of life from their loved ones inside CECOT. In Vera's case, the need is concrete and urgent: The removal of a lung is a rare, major operation typically requiring months of intensively managed recovery, including medication and rehabilitation exercises. According to doctors interviewed by NBC News — including a thoracic surgeon, a pulmonologist and a primary care physician — detaining a patient so soon after a pneumonectomy raises serious alarms from a medical perspective. 'It's the kind of procedure you do maybe once a year,' said Dr. Kiran Lagisetty, a general thoracic surgeon at the University of Michigan who specializes in diseases of the lung. 'You know the name of the patient and you worry about them, because whenever you get a phone call about that, it's probably not something good.' In the weeks after Vera was detained but before he was sent to El Salvador, according to his family, his cough — which had initially gone away after the procedure — came back. Among other things, pneumonectomy patients are told to avoid scenarios that could lead to respiratory infections — such as the crowded indoor space of a detention center or a prison. Infection poses a serious risk not only to the remaining lung but also to the cavity left by the lung removed in the procedure. Physicians look closely for any sign of complications, especially in the first 90 days of recovery. 'When a patient starts coughing, we treat it very seriously,' Lagisetty said. Vera's is one of several cases of men sent to CECOT with existing medical conditions. Together and Free, a nonprofit organization coordinating legal and case management services for the CECOT families, has documented, among others, eight cases of asthma, two of diabetes and one of muscular dystrophy. Even routine cases of diabetes or hypertension can present serious problems if they are not properly treated, said Dr. Nora V. Becker, a primary care physician and assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan. 'These types of chronic conditions require regular access to medications and high-quality medical care, or patients can face either immediate life-threatening complications or long-term complications that diminish their quality of life,' Becker said. Michelle Brané, Together and Free's executive director, said the families of the men deported to CECOT 'are terrified that they are at serious risk, not only from the general conditions at CECOT but from lack of appropriate medical treatment. Their lives are at risk because the United States put them there.'
NBC News
3 days ago
- NBC News
Rural communities brace for Medicaid cuts in Republicans' big bill
HERMANN, Mo. — Like many Americans, Cierra Matthews doesn't have time to pay close attention to the flood of policy changes and announcements coming out of Washington, D.C. So when the single mom of two boys heard that her Medicaid benefits could be impacted because Republicans are proposing changes to the social safety net program, she was shocked. Members of Congress, Matthews said, are 'covered no matter what, so they don't have to worry about it. So how is that fair to just take it away from somebody that does have to worry about it because of finances or because of a job?' 'I don't think it's fair that they don't care enough to think about that, and that they get to live in that happy little bubble of theirs,' she told NBC News in an interview on Friday. Matthews lives in a rural community 90 minutes west of St. Louis, where she works in the public school system and falls below the poverty line. She is one of 72 million Americans that relies on Medicaid for her health care, and before Missouri voted to expand Medicaid access in 2020, she was uninsured. She said that Medicaid saved her life: Matthews received a mental health diagnosis and is on medication that her sons said transformed their mom into a different person. Provider tax crackdown As part of a sweeping domestic policy bill, Republicans proposed adding work requirements for 'able-bodied' adults aged 19-64 with exceptions, including for those with dependents under 14, like Matthews. But GOP lawmakers have also included provisions in their so-called 'One Big Beautiful Bill' to crackdown on the health care provider tax that states charge health care providers to help fund Medicaid, particularly in rural areas. Under the new proposal, the federal government would limit reimbursement to states, with some conservatives citing 'abuse' of the program by undocumented migrants in blue states. A cap or freeze on that fee would cost rural hospitals, like the Hermann Area District Hospital, billions of dollars in funding, according to providers, physicians, hospital associations and even some Republican lawmakers. That includes Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who argued the provision would 'defund' rural hospitals. Dr. Michael Rothermich, the chief of staff at the Hermann hospital, said they are already treading water with current funding levels. 'We've had to make a lot of tough choices, a lot of cutbacks. We've had to freeze salaries. The saddest for me was that we had to let go of our home health agency,' a service that helped rehabilitate people in the remote area, Rothermich told NBC News. With the steeper cuts proposed by Republicans, Rothermich said there is no more room to trim. 'There's no magic money that pops up from someplace else or falls out of the sky to help us do our job. … We provide services to patients and we need to be reimbursed for those services so that we can take care of the next patient and we can buy the next medicine and we can buy the next piece of equipment,' said Rothermich. The hospital has just three full-time physicians on staff to service patients in two counties, where one in four rely on Medicaid. 'There are fewer and fewer people to take care of it, and fewer and fewer resources to try and do what we need to do to take care of people,' Rothermich said. In southern Missouri, Karen White, the administrator for Missouri Highlands Health Care, said the new provisions could mean they need to prioritize which patients to care for. 'I think we will see loss of life, maybe not immediate, but if chronic conditions go untreated for an extended period of time, it does result in lower quality of life, less people working,' White said. 'We've lost three hospitals in the last 10 years in our region, and that has left Missouri Highlands as the only form of health care.' Missouri Highlands is a federally qualified health center, or FQHC — a community-based health care provider that relies on federal funding to operate. White said 46% of the population there is on Medicaid, and Missouri Highlands is the only health care provider in a 3-4 hour radius. Republicans pitch a rural hospital fund To help address the shortfall that Republicans are creating as part of their bill to fund President Donald Trump's campaign promises, Senate leaders are working on a separate fund that would go directly to rural hospitals. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told NBC News on Tuesday that in response to 'a number of concerns our colleagues had mentioned' about their rural constituents, they are 'making good headway' on a solution. One such proposal landed on Wednesday from members of the Senate Finance Committee, the panel with jurisdiction over Medicaid, to funnel $15 billion to rural health care providers. But multiple Republican senators, including Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Hawley, feared it wasn't enough. 'I don't think that solves the entire problem,' Collins told reporters on Wednesday. 'Any money is helpful, but no, it is not adequate.' The American Hospital Association, a group that lobbies on behalf of the industry, estimates that rural hospitals would lose $50 billion over the next decade if the GOP's crackdown of the provider tax went into effect. And an analysis from the Urban Institute found that hospitals overall could lose upwards of $300 billion as a result of the provision. Tillis circulated a document to his Senate colleagues on Monday that illustrates the potential impact to rural healthcare providers in Republican states. In North Carolina, Tillis argued 600,000 people could lose access to health care as a result of Republicans' changes to Medicaid, and warned the party they could face losses in the 2026 midterm elections reminiscent of Democrats' defeats in 2014 after a rocky Obamacare rollout. Matthews told NBC News that because of this issue, she partially regrets her vote in the 2024 presidential election, especially given the administration's push to realize these cuts. 'Why does somebody else get to make those choices for you? Why is somebody else in charge of [Medicaid]? For you? I don't think it's fair,' she said. And White said she doesn't understand why Republicans are committing 'political suicide' by including these provisions in their signature piece of legislation. 'It does seem a little odd that the folks that elected [Republicans] will be the ones that are impacted the most with these cuts,' White said.
NBC News
3 days ago
- NBC News
‘We will see loss of life': How GOP Medicaid reforms could threaten rural hospitals
NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Julie Tsirkin reports from rural Missouri, where some hospital leaders warn that Republicans' Medicaid reforms could force closures and jeopardize care in underserved 25, 2025
