As Sen. John McCain underwent treatment for a deadly form of brain cancer, Cindy McCain found herself in a position familiar to many Americans: on the phone fighting with a health insurance company.
A representative wanted to deny her husband doctor-ordered chemotherapy.
“All the debates about health insurance that had been so politically divisive in the past few days — and in the years before that — suddenly landed hard in my lap,” McCain writes in “Stronger: Courage, Hope & Humor in My Life with John McCain,” a new memoir out Tuesday.
“They went from theoretical to very personal. Being at the mercy of an insurance company for life-and-death action is terrifying.”
McCain won the standoff after disclosing that she owned the Hensley Beverage Co., a Phoenix-based beer distributor founded by her father that has the same insurance carrier as John McCain’s Senate plan.
“I have sixteen hundred employees, and you are our health-care provider,” Cindy McCain recalls telling the company in the book. “If you want me to pull the plug on those policies now, I will. You can explain to your bosses why.”
The senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee got the chemotherapy.
“My husband was given the best of care, let’s be very clear,” McCain elaborated Monday in an interview with The Arizona Republic and the USA Today Network. “Mayo Clinic and the National Institutes of Health were both amazing for him. But those kinds of details, I had to deal with. We’re talking about my husband…
