When Kenya Wheeler enrolled in UC Berkeley’s Student Health Insurance Plan at the beginning of his graduate studies, he skimmed over the section outlining the $400,000 lifetime limit on how much the plan would pay for his care. At the time, the 37-year-old, rode his bike to campus every day and paid attention to what he ate, had always been fairly healthy. The lifetime cap became relevant to him in the worst way in his final semester of graduate school. He was diagnosed with lymphoma. His treatment included the surgical removal of a tumor in his brain, outpatient and inpatient chemotherapy treatments and a prohibitively expensive daily chemo pill he took at home.
