After coming out ahead in his battle with cancer, a local man is now in a battle with his insurance company. After Randy Montgomery’s insurance company sent checks to MD Anderson to pay for treatment, he’s now being told he must pay all of that money back. 

When Montgomery was diagnosed November 2017 with throat cancer he chose not to pursue traditional radiation treatment. Even though he was told insurance would not cover the costs, Montgomery went with proton therapy in hopes of avoiding severe side effects down the road. 

“When you are radiating in the neck and the tonsils, where mine started, you have brain stem, thyroid, tongue, roof of the mouth, all kinds of areas,” Montgomery said. “The jawbone. Once you do all that radiating with conventional radiation 5-10 years down the road your jawbone crumbles.”

Montgomery said it was during his proton treatment that checks started coming in and he wondered if Blue Cross Blue Shield had turned around on the decision not to pay.

“I asked MD Anderson that, does this mean they are going to reverse it? They said without a letter from them, they have to send a letter saying they are going to reverse it,” Montgomery said. “Once we have that letter we will know but right now all we know is they are paying the claims.”

Months after Montgomery completed treatment, he heard from Blue Cross Blue Shield again.

“The end of July I went to my mailbox I had 27 letters from Blue Cross Blue Shield,” Montgomery said. “Each one of them stating on this date you had this treatment, which was medically unnecessary. We paid that claim in error, we need that money back.”

Montgomery said it could come to as much as $100,000, but he’d do it all again.

“I would do this again in a heartbeat,” Montgomery said. “Just the stories you hear. While we were there for six and a half weeks, we saw people who obviously could not go against their insurer and had to do it the other way. It was horrific.”

Montgomery was told he has a 98 percent chance of being cancer-free in five years, but at least one battle appears to be far from over. 

A Gofundme page has been set up, you can find it here, and some people have said they will hold benefits to help him raise money. 

We reached out to blue cross blue shield today for more information and were told they’re unable to comment on a specific case.