As part of its Bearing Witness 2.0 project, the Huffington Post is rounding up a few of the best local stories of the day.
Some organ donors are improperly billed for surgery and wind up unable to obtain insurance because of their generosity, reports Mary Ann Roser of the Austin American-Statesman. Last year Philip Knisely, 53, of Austin, Texas, donated his kidney to his co-worker, Jose Luis Vara Jr.
Vara, a father of three, was suffering from the same polycystic kidney disease that killed his father. (This sentence has been corrected.)
Knisely had some post-operative complications, for which he was improperly billed $18,000 (the charges were later refunded).
But now Knisely is worried that if he loses his job the "pre-existing condition" of having just one kidney will render him ineligible for new insurance.
A 52-year-old mother of five in Wheaton, Ill. told the Statesman that that's what happened to her after she donated her liver in 2002.
While organ donation advocates say insurers do deem organ donation a pre-existing condition, the practice is hard to track, the Los Angeles Times reported in July; there's a dearth of data to support the claim.
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A family in Newton, Mass. is struggling to hold onto their home after their father, a beloved local community athletic coach, passed away from a heart attack two weeks ago. Local NBC affiliate WHDH reports that Jeff Beatrice, 49, left behind his wife 11 children.
The family started falling behind on their bills months ago, after Jeff, a self-employed CPA, lost his investment in a renovation project that went sour. The family made cuts to get by, including dropping Jeff's life insurance. Then in January, Jeff's mother, Dorothy, who lived just next door -- in a house Jeff built by hand -- was trapped in her home and died as it burned to the ground. Jeff's blind brother, John, was also living in the house, and had no one where to go. Jeff and his wife, Elinor, took him in. "All of this stress just killed him,'' said Elinor.
The Beatrice home, originally set to be auctioned on Thursday, has been spared until January 5 because of a reprieve the bank granted after Jeff's death. A memorial website and family fund have been established to help the Beatrices raise money to keep their home.
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Robin Ennis called her daughter Amanda "our two-million dollar child," she said, because at two years old she was diagnosed with brain cancer, and "[t]hat was the total of all the medical bills." Robin's husband, Bill, had insurance that covered 80 percent of the costs, but the remaining hundreds of thousands of dollars bankrupted the family and put their home in foreclosure, reports the Warren Reporter. Two years later, despite persistent hospital visits, transplants, surgeries and chemotherapy, Amanda passed away.
Now the Ennis family has dedicated themselves to helping neighbor Claudia Smith, 6, who was diagnosed with brain cancer. A donation fund has been established to help the Smith family avoid the bankruptcy that the Ennises had to experience.
HuffPost readers: Seen a good local story? Know of a neighbor going to bizarre lengths to get through the recession? Tell us about it! Email jmhattem@gmail.com.