Community Corner

Cal Student with Brain Cancer is Running out of Health Insurance

Kenya Wheeler is fighting for his life while losing his student healthcare insurance.

A UC Berkeley graduate student with a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer is emerging as the poster child for the intense debate around healthcare reform in the United States, says Huffington Post blogger Pamela Mays McDonald.

As the Supreme Court deliberates “on whether to overturn” the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Berkeley native Kenya Wheeler is on the verge of losing his health insurance.

Wheeler, 38, was diagnosed with cancer last fall. In the last eight months, Wheeler has almost “exhausted his entire lifetime cap for treatment under his student health insurance plan.”  He currently has “$40,000 remaining in his account,” which will only cover about “five more days in the hospital,” says the Huffington Post.

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The article paints Wheeler as a keenly intelligent, affable man with a “low-key positivity” that has helped him in his career as an urban planner.

After working as an urban planner in Southern California, Wheeler recently went back to school at UC Berkeley. There, he’s on a research team, working with UC Berkeley Professor Paul Waddell at the “Institute of Urban and Regional Development at the UrbanSim.”

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According to its website, UrbanSim is a “software-based simulation system” that helps with the planning and analysis of urban development. They incorporate “interactions between land use, transportation, the economy, and the environment.”

Wheeler is a small plane pilot who takes to the air as a hobby, the Huffington Post reports.


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