Dr. Gawande also recommends (And with my underlining FOR THOSE WHO THINK THEY ARE WELL "INSURED")

Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

By Anna Gorman of KHN @ NPR.org, February 26, 2019

Carol Marley wants everyone to know what a life-threatening cancer diagnosis looks like in America today.

Yes, it's the chemotherapy that leaves you weak and unable to walk across the room. Yes, it's the litany of tests and treatments – the CT scans and MRIs and biopsies and endoscopies and surgeries and blood draws and radiation and doctor visits. Yes, it's envisioning your funeral, which torments you day and night.

But none of these is her most gnawing, ever present concern.

That would be the convoluted medical bills that fill multiple binders, depleted savings accounts that destroy early retirement plans and so, so many phone calls with insurers and medical providers.

"I have faith in God that my cancer is not going to kill me," says Marley, who lives in Round Rock, Texas. "I have a harder time believing that this is gonna get straightened out and isn't gonna harm us financially. That's the leap of faith that I'm struggling with."

Coping with the financial fallout of cancer is exhausting — and nerve-wracking. But the worst part, Marley says, is that it's unexpected.

When she was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the pancreas head in July, she didn't anticipate so many bills, or so many billing mistakes. After all, she is a hospital nurse with good private insurance that has allowed her access to high-quality doctors and hospitals.

Randall Marley, a computer systems engineer, says he frequently comes home from work to find his wife feeling unwell and frustrated about having spent a precious day of her recovery making phone calls to understand and dispute medical bills. One recent night she was in tears and "emotionally at a breaking point," he says. "The hardest part of this is seeing the toll it's taken on my wife."

Stress-inducing bills accumulate

More than 42 percent of the 9.5 million people diagnosed with cancer from 2000 to 2012 drained their life's assets within two years, according to a study published last year in the American Journal of Medicine. Cancer patients are 2.65 times more likely to file for bankruptcy than those without cancer, and bankruptcy puts them at a higher risk for early death, according to research.

But those statistics don't convey the daily misery of a patient with a life-threatening disease trying to navigate the convoluted financial demands of the U.S. health care system while simultaneously facing a roller coaster of treatment and healing.

Stephanie Wheeler, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the number of bills coming from different providers can be overwhelming [....]