Susan Foose
Ventnor, New Jersey

“Sadly, many have lost children to addiction … Treatment works, we know that.”

>>>>Susan Foose does not blame the health insurance industry for her son, Bryan, becoming addicted to drugs. She does, however, blame her health insurance company for contributing to his death of that addiction. The evaluation to determine the level of treatment Bryan needed was done over the phone. That phone exam assessed him as needing low-level, meaning out-patient, care. The day after that determination was made, Bryan died.

In the course of Bryan’s addiction, Susan had been frustrated by obstacles in the managed care system that kept him from receiving appropriate care. At one point, she went out of the state and managed to obtain an emergency health card for Bryan from Pennsylvania. She says matter-of-factly, “As a mother, you do what you have to do.”

As the co-founder and current coordinator of the support group Parent-to-Parent, Susan continues to do what she can to bring to light the facts of 22-year-old Bryan’s avoidable death in the hope of saving other parents from experiencing a loss of their child. Her frustration, however, remains. To this day, more than five years after Bryan’s death, she wonders why it is called “health care.”

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