When medical school professor Bryant Lin founded the Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education, he wanted to advance research on diseases that disproportionately affect Asian populations, such as nonsmoker lung cancer. What he didn’t expect was for himself to become a prime example of the phenomenon.
Lin’s symptoms started with a persistent cough that refused to go away for weeks. Lin got a CT scan and a biopsy through a bronchoscopy, which revealed lung cancer with EGFR exon 19 deletion. The diagnosis is a tumor mutation commonly found in Asian nonsmokers.
Since then, Lin has been taking the treatment drug osimertinib and undergoing chemotherapy. But a few months ago, the cough came back, and an X-ray showed fluid in his lungs. As a result, his doctor prescribed the drug Rybrevant. However, his insurance denied it.
As Lin put in a now-viral LinkedIn post: “I’m living in insurance hell.”
Lin had been scheduled for two nine-hour intravenous infusions on Monday and Tuesday, but the email from Aetna derailed his plans.
The Daily has reached out to Aetna to comment.
Lin told The Daily that he remembers thinking, “God, what do I do? There’s no other standard treatment that’s FDA approved”. He added that his cough has been getting worse and he’s been getting more tired.
During his interview with The Daily, Lin had to pause twice: once for a coughing fit and another to answer a call from Warris Bokhari, the insurance claim specialist who has been helping Lin with his appeal. If approved, the appeal would open a path forward for Lin’s case to be reconsidered.
His post on LinkedIn was met with an overwhelming response, reaching over 500,000 viewers. Many reached out in private with offers to help, Lin said, which is how he was put in touch with Bokhari.
The plea worked: the Aetna team reached out via voicemail to work to resolve the issue. Now, the intravenous therapy has been greenlit, but Lin’s appeal for the oral drug, which in clinical trials is typically taken alongside the infusions, is still in process.
The back-and-forth has been emotionally taxing, Lin said, for both himself and his family.
“This is the last thing you want to deal with,” he said.