Texas COPD Patient Dies by Suicide Hours After Flare-Up, Family Says Insurer Delayed His Medication

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Kenney Blewett had lived with lung disease for more than a decade. This year the flare-ups got worse, according to his wife, Cindy Blewett, who described them to KFF Health News as moments where her husband felt like he couldn't breathe. "The scariest thing in the world," she said he called them.

He'd lost 45 pounds and could barely take out the trash without getting winded. One doctor told Cindy, "That sounds like cancer." It didn't turn out to be cancer, but decades of smoking had caught up with him through chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.

On June 2, Blewett's pulmonologist prescribed a new medication meant to ease the breathing attacks. Two days later, Walgreens emailed him that the prescription was delayed "due to an insurance issue that we're working to resolve," according to KFF Health News, whose reporting was also carried by CBS News. Blewett died by suicide in June, hours after another flare-up, according to the same reporting.

"He was hopeful that it would work," Cindy told KFF Health News two months after his death. "I wish we had the chance to find out."

Neither Walgreens nor the specific insurer involved has been named in the reporting, and it's not clear from available sources whether the holdup was a formal prior-authorization denial, a formulary restriction, or something else entirely. Patients and families are often told there's "an issue" with no explanation of what it is, who made the call, or how to appeal it.

A pattern bigger than one pharmacy

Insurance delays and denials rank as a top complaint nationally. Nearly 7 in 10 adults called them "a major problem" in a January 2026 KFF Health Tracking Poll.

In June 2025, six months after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot in New York, the Trump administration rolled out a high-profile pledge signed by dozens of major insurers promising to cut back on the prior-authorization requirements that block or slow doctor-recommended care. It was voluntary. There's no penalty built in if a company doesn't follow through.

A KFF Health News investigation published in July 2026 found some of those same insurers aren't implementing all the fixes they promised when they signed on. The pledge generated headlines but did not generate enforcement.

"It's just gotten completely out of hand," said Matt Toresco, CEO of Arch, a patient advocacy and consulting firm, describing the maze patients now have to navigate just to get a prescription filled.

States have tried to fill the gap. Texas and others have passed laws aimed at speeding up insurer decisions and limiting denials. But those laws don't reach the plans covering the majority of Americans, including traditional Medicare and most employer-sponsored insurance, which fall outside state jurisdiction.

Separately, Texas AG opens a probe into a different insurer

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation into Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas and its parent, Health Care Service Corporation, over allegations that the company's prior-authorization and utilization-review process delayed medically necessary care, according to Click2Houston. One case cited by Paxton's office involved a newborn whose transfer to a facility equipped to treat the infant was allegedly held up by administrative denials despite the procedure being covered.

"Blue Cross Blue Shield has a responsibility to put patients before profits and ensure that Texans receive the care they need," Paxton said in the announcement. His office issued a Civil Investigative Demand to determine whether the company violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. No charges have been filed, and the investigation is in its early stages. There is no indication in available reporting that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas was the insurer involved in Blewett's case. The two developments are separate but both surfaced in Texas within the same stretch of 2026.

The industry's defenders would argue prior authorization exists for a reason: to catch unnecessary prescriptions, verify medical necessity, and control costs in a system where spending is already strained. That's a legitimate function on paper. What the Blewett case and the Paxton investigation both raise is whether the process, as actually run, is fast enough and transparent enough when a patient is this sick.

Cindy Blewett is left without an answer to the only question that matters to her: whether the medication would have worked. The pulmonologist who prescribed it, the pharmacy that flagged the delay, and the insurer behind the "issue" have not, according to available reporting, explained what specifically went wrong or whether it could have been fixed faster.