Thirty years ago, I came home to New England with my high school sweetheart and had a beautiful baby boy. We bought a house and planted our flag firmly in the soil of the American Dream.

My greatest joy came from helping others, so I decided to devote my career to service. First, as an Emergency Medical Technician, (EMT) and then, as a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

In elected office, my faith in the free market was unwavering. I believed that corporations, no matter how big, were still businesses that needed to do right by their customers, and if they didn’t, they would suffer financial consequences until they corrected their behavior.

Then I met United Healthcare.

Hundreds of thousands of women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year and although tens of thousands die from it, I assumed my battle would be a fairly straightforward one. After all, they told me I had the “good” kind, the common curable kind. The odds seemed in my favor.

Initially, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute was “in the network,” so I went there for world class treatment. But things took a turn. One surgery led to another, then a third, and a new problem emerged. I began to experience excruciating pain. It felt as though I was wrapped in barbed wire, while walking on broken glass, through burning flames. The diagnosis? Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). CRPS is rated as the most painful disease known to modern medicine and there is no cure. It is nicknamed the “suicide disease” because 70% of people with it will choose suicide.

They shouldn’t have to when there is treatment available — ketamine infusions.

United Healthcare has refused to cover the one treatment I need.

The National Institutes of Health deems ketamine the “most effective” in achieving the “greatest pain score reductions in patients with CRPS.” The price tag for each dose runs from $600 to $1,000. I wanted to live with less pain, so I did what every American does when their health insurance company refuses to provide them with medically necessary care, I started a GoFundMe. I sold some of my possessions. Then, I did another GoFundMe. Then, I sold the rest of my possessions. I thought I was going to die. At one point I wrote letters to everyone I loved to say goodbye. My husband began drinking more and more. He later died. Our home went into foreclosure and my dignity became near nonexistent. At this point, I had been locked in a bed for over two years, doped up on opioids and narcotics in a failed attempt to manage the pain. My bedroom had become a prison cell. Not only was UnitedHealth denying my care, they weren’t even giving my providers the codes to bill.

I had to pay cash for every treatment. I started rationing my infusions and I started to decline rapidly. UnitedHealth decided that Dana-Farber was no longer in the network. I feared my son would lose both of his parents. I joined People’s Action Institute’s Care Over Cost campaign so I could see my son put one more candle on his birthday cake.

Care Over Cost helped me fight United Healthcare for the care I need and deserve.

I’m the person in that viral video you’ve seen of a woman holding back tears while she talks into a megaphone during a demonstration in the lobby of UnitedHealth’s Minnesota headquarters. Care Over Cost is made up of policyholders with claim denials and health justice advocates who have spent the last several years asking Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Aetna, Humana, Centene and United Healthcare to greenlight care, and pay bills in individual cases.

Despite all of the things the Care Over Cost campaign has made possible, senior executives from these greedy for-profit corporations have not agreed to systemic reforms that would address the problem for the millions of other people being denied care every year. The whole business model of health insurance corporations is based on paying for as little care as possible and sending profits to Wall Street, executives or other business interests. If we want things to change, we need the government to act.

It got so bad last year, that I had to reach out to Sen. Maggie Hassan. I got a statement from United Healthcare that said they would cover only $1.22 of the bill my doctor submitted. It took a call from a U.S. senator to get UnitedHealth to change its stance.

You would think that would be the end of the story, but instead it’s like Yogi Bera said, “It’s deja vu all over again.” I need ketamine. United Healthcare is denying my care. I am appealing and complaining, reaching out to Sen. Hassan, and asking the Care Over Cost campaign to help.

We pay for-profit companies for health care. The more they deny care, the more they make. We need a system that prioritizes care, not quarterly earnings, stock prices and extortionate billing.

“Sir” Andrew Witty might run America’s largest health care company, but he seems not to know about the harms his policyholders experience. The $25 million dollar annual salary he gets (before bonuses) is funded in part by the taxes and Medicare premiums we pay. I condemn the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. I also condemn denials and delays of lifesaving care that cause harm.

UnitedHealth is not trapped in a health care system they didn’t create. They are responsible for designing and operating the system that we experience as broken, but works perfectly for corporations, billionaires, the C-Suite, the stock traders, and the shareholders.

In a leaked internal video, Witty called profit-driven decisions that ruin lives and end them, “unnecessary care.” But let’s look at the facts: Witty got a $5 million raise for cutting services. The health insurance industry spent $49.2 million on lobbying last year. United Healthcare made $22.4 billion in profits in 2024 alone. All while I fought, and continue to fight alongside the Care Over Cost campaign for the lifesaving care I need. It’s endless. I still fight with United Healthcare for full coverage. Even after having won a prior authorization, United Healthcare pays only pennies toward the treatment I need, leaving me holding the responsibility for the bill.

Companies like United Healthcare deny care because they are designed to do so. These are not corporations that can be reformed by complaining to the Better Business Bureau, or moving our dollars elsewhere in the free market. These are intertwined perpetrators of harm that grow in unison like mold. They have become a vertical and horizontal monopoly that you cannot evade, regardless of whether or not you have Medicare, Medicaid, health insurance through your job, or health insurance purchased in a marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act. There is no place in the country in which doctors, nurses, and patients aren’t suffering under the current system.

We cannot live free until corporate greed dies.

A health care system that denies care more than 248 million times a year is designed to deny care, not deliver it. We need solutions at the scale of the problem we are experiencing. The regulations Democrats and Republicans have fought over in the past are but one layer of a 1,000 layer cake. Anyone pundit on tv or penning a screed in a prominent publication, like Newsweek, about the dangers of socialized medicine is bought and paid for and unserious. This is bigger than any politician or political party. It’s put up or shut up time: Lawmakers need to act.

Jennifer Coffey is a former Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, representing the Merrimack 6 District from 2008 to 2012.