Kenney Blewett had lived with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for more than a decade. By 2026, he had lost 45 pounds while trying to manage increasingly frequent flare-ups. A new prescription on June 2 offered hope, but it had not arrived when he died by suicide at his home in Kyle, Texas, five days later. The timing alone does not establish that an insurance delay caused his death.
His wife, Cindy Blewett, said Kenney was hopeful the new drug would work, according to East Idaho News, in a story by KFF Health News reporter Lauren Sausser. Walgreens emailed him that the medication was delayed because of an insurance issue. Cindy said he had a severe COPD flare-up on the afternoon of June 7 and used his nebulizer that night. He left a note saying his health was too poor to continue living. The couple had celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary earlier in 2026.
A Tangle of Medicare Paperwork
Blewett had Medicare Parts A and B, a private Wellcare Value Script Part D plan, and a Medicare supplement policy through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas. The report said his nebulized liquid medication was expected to be covered through Medicare Part B's durable medical equipment benefit, but Medicare had no record of a claim for it under that policy. Walgreens submitted the prescription to Part B on June 2, the day it was written, but the submission lacked a diagnostic code from his physician.
Walgreens requested the code from Blewett's pulmonologist's office that day, but Cindy said the office never saw a fax requesting it. A Walgreens employee later told the family the prescription required prior authorization, a process in which a plan may require approval before covering treatment. The report noted that Medicare supplement policies like Blewett's do not require prior authorization, leaving the family uncertain about which plan or provider was responsible for the holdup. Cindy sought answers from Medicare, the Part D plan, the pulmonologist's office and Walgreens, but she still questions who was responsible.
How Medicare Coverage Can Differ
The reporting on Blewett's case described his nebulized liquid medication as intended for coverage under Part B's durable medical equipment benefit; he also had a separate Part D prescription drug plan and a Medicare supplement policy. According to Medicare.gov, Part D plans may require prior authorization for certain drugs under plan-specific rules. That general guidance does not establish which coverage pathway applied to Blewett's medication. The account says Medicare had no record of the prescription being billed to Part B, and it does not identify a Part D claim or establish that the supplement policy was billed. The available information therefore does not resolve which plan or processing step was responsible for the delay.
State Investigators Now Circling Blewett's Insurer
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a Civil Investigative Demand on September 29 to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, which provided Blewett's Medicare supplement policy, Hoodline previously reported. The inquiry concerns allegations that administrative prior authorization delays violated the state's deceptive trade practices law, including claims that utilization review timelines led to severe disease progression or patient death. The information cited here does not establish that Paxton's demand concerns Blewett's individual case or that the insurer was responsible for his medication delay.
Texas has tried to get ahead of this kind of delay before. The state passed House Bill 3459 in 2021, known as the Gold Card law, and refined it through House Bill 3812 in 2025, exempting physicians with a 90% prior authorization approval rate from preauthorization requirements altogether, according to the Texas Department of Insurance. But state officials note the law only applies to state-regulated plans, which cover roughly 20% of insured Texans — leaving traditional Medicare and employer-sponsored plans, which together cover more than half of all Americans, outside its reach. Lawmakers extended physician evaluation windows to 12 months in the 2025 update after the Texas Medical Association found fewer than 4% of doctors had qualified under the earlier rules.
AI Enters the Prior Authorization Fight
Artificial intelligence is increasingly deciding whether patients get timely care. In January 2026, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched its six-year Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction model, known as WISeR, introducing AI-assisted prior authorization into traditional Medicare for the first time in six states, including Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Washington, according to KFF. The pilot does not currently impose prior authorization requirements on COPD medications, but CMS has said it may expand to more services and states. Health and Human Services Secretary Mehmet Oz has said the program is intended to root out waste in original Medicare.
The pilot has drawn sharp political pushback. In July, Senate Republicans voted to block an amendment from Senate Aging Committee Democrats that sought to immediately defund and eliminate the WISeR program, according to the office of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Critics have highlighted that private tech vendors under the pilot are financially compensated based on averted program expenditures. In September, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published roughly 1,000 pages of CMS internal records obtained through federal litigation after suing the agency under the Freedom of Information Act, revealing widespread reports of administrative chaos, treatment delays, and patient harm tied to AI prior authorization vendors.
The Human Toll Behind the Paperwork
The scale of the burden facing doctors and patients is immense. A 2025 American Medical Association survey of 1,000 practicing physicians found that medical practices complete an average of 39 prior authorization requests per doctor every week, consuming 13 hours of physician and staff time — and 40% of surveyed practices reported employing dedicated staff solely to manage that paperwork. A separate AMA survey found that 29% of physicians reported prior authorization delays had directly caused a serious adverse event for a patient in their care, including hospitalization, permanent disability, or death.
Research has also tied respiratory disease directly to suicide risk. A cohort study published in April 2025 in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that COPD patients had three times the incidence rate of death by suicide compared to people without the disease, with researchers noting the risk was highest among patients who also had depression and chronic smoking histories. COPD affects roughly 16 million Americans and remains among the leading chronic causes of respiratory disability nationwide, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
Public confidence in insurer promises to fix the system remains thin. A KFF poll released in July 2025 found only 39% of U.S. consumers believed major private insurers would actually follow through on a voluntary industry pledge to streamline prior authorizations — a pledge signed by dozens of insurers six months after the high-profile killing of a UnitedHealthcare executive, and one that carries no penalties for noncompliance. KFF Health News later reported some pledge-signing insurers would not implement all the initiatives they had promised.
Kenney had a history of mental-health struggles and had attempted suicide once before. Matt Toresco has said patients need more assistance navigating insurance hurdles, and Mike Hess has said Medicare has become complex and convoluted for ordinary families to untangle. A second COPD medication for Kenney was ordered directly from the drug manufacturer on June 2, but it did not arrive until several weeks after his death. Cindy has said she believes timely receipt of both medications might have allowed her husband to live longer.
