Thanks Mike for the read.

"Further complicating the issue is the role of for-profit insurance companies, who have become accustomed to very large, double-blind multi-center Phase III testing, before large pharmaceutical firms (Big Parma) finally gets FDA approval to market a drug that has cost $1B or more to bring to bring to market. And of that, according to a recent report of Forbes, over 90% of the total development cost can be in Phase III (final) testing alone! Enter the for-profit medical insurance companies, and suddenly it's very easy to deny coverage for a procedure that might require a week's hospitalization, sometimes utilizing an ICU. All it takes is to adopt the position that they will approve only those procedures supported by the "best medical evidence," which means the equivalence of Phase III resting, even if the drug at issue has long been approved by the FDA for other uses. And if the money isn't there to do the large scale testing these standards mandate, gosh, that's too bad. See, generally, Evidence-based medicine -Wikipedia article , at Section 6, Limitations and criticism."

My wife, who worked at Lockheed's corporate headquarters in "benefits", could not, did not receive proper care for her RSD for four years. Her coverage was Etna HMO then Cigna and then some other terrible outfit. She explained to me, representatives from each insurance company worked full time at Lockheed who pulled the strings and wrote the contracts that doctors sign off on. She told me she will not get the care she needed and that after 15 years of service she will be terminated in which she was. She needed her doctor (who offered very little care) to sign off on her 2 year long term disability.

The doctor she was seeing at the end of her short term disability was switched out at the last minute with the head of the pain center. He explained to the both of us that Suzy had RSD and what it was, in which we already knew, and then walked out of the office never to be seen again. He refused to sign the long term and never returned our calls. He told Lockheed Suzy was ok to return to work. She never did and was terminated, and that was in 2006. Ironically, Suzy's SS lawyer knew this doctor, and that he was quite up to date with RSD and in-fact helped her on several cases.

She lost her insurance in which I picked up my employers coverage. It was a Cadillac plan and very expensive. But what I will never forget is the immediate treatment she received from her new doctors. 4 years she struggled (she did not tell me her issue for 2 years), within 2 weeks of her termination doctors aggressively put forth an effort to control her RSD using the new insurance plan. Now she is on medicare receiving no care because only a very small handful of incompetent, pee testing, dirty waiting rooms, rude nurses--- doctors except her Medicare/Humana coverage. She rather suffer.

I just pray that perhaps one good thing that came out of these two wars the US has been engaged in is new successful medical treatments that may lead to pain relief for those long term RSD patients.