Doctors Remove 51-Pound Cancerous Tumor. Female Patient Waited For Health Insurance

Need proof that the insurance system in America is broken? Doctors removed a 51-pound cancerous tumor from a female patient after she waited more than a month to become eligible for health insurance.

Speaking of the patients state at the time of the surgery Dr. David Dupree noted:

“She was a skinny lady with a huge belly. I mean it looked like she was literally pregnant with triplets.”

The female, a 65-year-old woman in New Jersey was “all belly” according to her surgeon.

When you consider that Evelyn Dupree only weighed 120-pound before the tumor presented itself the 51-pound tumor was a lot of extra weight and very noticeable.

Dupree says she went in for medical help on June 4, days after she turned 65 and qualified for Medicare. By the time of her emergency surgery she weighed more than 170 pounds and the tumor was crushing her inferior vena cava, one of the main veins responsible for returning blood to the heart.

The surgery couldn’t have come any sooner, originally scheduled for a Monday removal doctors realized the tumor was life threatening on Sunday night and they moved to remove it.

The next step for Evelyn Dupree will be to visit with an oncologist to determine if all traces of cancer were removed with tumor surgery.

Health insurance debates are sure to rage on with the Supreme Courts recent ruling and if this case does not come up once again I will be extremely surprised given the drastic steps Dupree took to avoid high medical bills without insurance.