ESPN Anchor And Author Nicholas Sparks Advocate Health Care Coverage For Childhood Disorders

By Meagan Wiseley – University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service

ESPN Anchor Hannah Storm and bestselling author Nicholas Sparks held a forum on health care and health insurance for childhood disorders today at the Brookings Institution, paying special attention to two childhood disorders: autism spectrum disorders and vascular anomalies.

Hannah Storm, founder of the Hannah Storm Foundation, spoke on her personal experience with vascular anomalies, or vascular birthmarks. Hannah was born with a port-wine stain birthmark on her left eyelid and below her eye.

“My parents spent their money and their considerable effort on a series of procedures throughout my childhood that actually left me pretty much like I was before,” she said.

“Although these outdated, and in the end, ineffective treatments were not covered by insurance, my parents made all the sacrifices necessary to get me treatment,” Storm added.

Storm said “time is of the essence” when treating these birthmarks. According to Storm, the insurance industry often views these procedures as cosmetic procedures, and often are not covered.

Nicholas Sparks also gave a parent perspective on his experience with one child with Autism and another who was born with a serious hemangioma, a self-involuting tumor of blood vessel cells.

He recalled the diagnosis of his autistic son, who underwent multiple tests before being diagnosed with the condition. Sparks said this prolonged diagnosis did nothing but cause his son to fall further behind in development than his peers. He said early diagnosis and treatment would have been the best way to treat his child.

Sparks’ twin daughters were born in 2001. One of the twins, Lexi, was born with a pencil eraser sized hemangioma on her neck. Over the next eight weeks of her life, the tumor grew. Sparks and his wife then took their child in for a surgical removal of the tumor. Six weeks later, they discovered another hemangioma that was growing inward toward her trachea and esophagus, which was life threatening. The tumor was removed, and Lexi’s life was saved.

“Despite these things I consider myself very blessed because we could pay for it…but that’s not most people. Most people lose themselves in the fear and that’s what we’re here for,” Sparks said.

In closing, Hannah Storm said, “the technology is there to help these children and their families, the resources are not accessible…often due to the fact that these procedures are denied out of hand because they are determined to be cosmetic and part of the issue lies in nebulous insurance codes, that is something we are trying to change as we speak.”