Eli McCrary: Decades Lost to Addiction, Now Racing to Save What's Left

Eli McCrary has spent his whole life in Omaha, Nebraska. He dropped out of high school and earned his GED while incarcerated. After his release, he went on to earn an Associate of Applied Science in Chemical Dependency Counseling from Metro Community College, then a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. But for more than 40 years, addiction defined his life. “I’ve been an addict and, you know, lived on the streets and didn’t care about anything other than my addiction,” he said.

Within the last year, Eli went through treatment and got sober. Getting clean also meant confronting a long list of health problems he had ignored. “Upon getting sober, you know, I mean, I found out I was diabetic,” he said. “I found out I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, COPD, and then just recently they diagnosed me with cancer.”

Just as he began treatment for the cancer, found in his right kidney, his Medicaid coverage was cut off. The first he heard of it was when the hospital called. “The hospital actually called me and said, you don’t have insurance anymore, so we had to cancel all your appointments,” he said. “And I’m like, my life is in the balance here. What do you mean we canceled all my appointments?”

Eli tried to explain his situation to his managed care organization. “I’m calling around there saying, you know, you have a work issue that you have to work out, and I’m trying to say, I’m disabled,” he said. “What can I do? I can’t walk. I can’t move around. What would you expect me to do for work?”

Part of the breakdown, he acknowledged, came down to a missed change of address. He had been receiving mail at a treatment center he no longer lived at. “I never corrected my address for the treatment center,” he said. “I never got any information saying that, you know, maybe they gave me a warning about it. I don’t know, you know, but they never kept any of my mail either.” He didn’t learn anything was wrong until the day the hospital called.

Eventually, the managed care organization told him the issue would be resolved because he had just turned 65. “Molina came back and said, okay, we’ll work this out with you and figure out the narrative later about, but you’re 65, you’re entitled to Medicare or Medicaid at this point on regardless,” he said. But by then, he had to start over, rebuilding the same appointments that had already been scheduled before the cancellation. The delay caused by the lapse in coverage was over two months. Eli added, “The time lapse has actually cost me time of my life.”

The uncertainty of what the delay might mean weighs on him. “I don’t know what I got left,” he said. “It could metastasize and go to other parts of my body, you know, and I get there and they say, okay, well, there’s nothing we can do for you right now, simply because I wasn’t in a position to do anything to meet the requirements that they had.”

His kidney treatment itself is complicated by his heart. Because his heart isn’t strong enough for surgery, doctors plan to freeze the kidney instead of removing it, and the specialist who performs the procedure travels in from outside the area, adding further delay while Eli works against the clock to reschedule.

Money has been a constant strain. Even with coverage, the copays on his medications add up. “Then, you know, the drug part of it was even worse because there’s a copay on all these things,” he said. “It’s like, oh, it’s only $34. Okay. It’s only $34, but there’s 40 different medications.”

One phone call about his medication costs left him feeling belittled. When he told a Medicaid representative he couldn’t afford a $34 copay, he said she responded with disbelief. “She’s like, oh my God, you know, like, how, how can I not have money like that?” he recalled. “I said, excuse me, what did you say? She said, oh, we’ll just go on with it. I’ll see what I can do for you.” The exchange stayed with him. “It insulted me,” he said. “If I could be in a different position and pay for all these things, I would happily pay for them … but I’m not in that position.” Eli was able to find some relief through Heart Ministries, which has helped cover some of his medication costs and also provided him with a pair of glasses.

All of these costs have resulted in significant medical debt. Recently, Eli needed two ambulance rides in a single day — first from his apartment to a CHI clinic, and then from that clinic to Bergen Mercy, after the clinic determined it couldn’t treat him. Neither ride was covered. “Those ambulance rides, they want a thousand dollars,” he said. “They didn’t pay for those at all. So, two grand of these ambulances, I don’t see how they’re ever going to get it.”

Despite everything, Eli says he is focused on the health needs he ignored for decades as an active addict. “I only cared about my addiction,” he said, “but now I care about me.” He is working to get his teeth fixed, and his hearing tested, on top of managing diabetes, COPD, and AFib, for which he takes blood thinners. “It’s a tough fight at this point, but I’m still here, still fighting the good fight,” he said. “So now I’m counting my blessings.”

Eli is a father of two grown daughters and a grandfather of four. “To them, I’m a superhero,” he said. “That’s the highlight of my life.”

Looking at the work requirements, Eli draws a distinction between people who can work and people, like him, who cannot. “I understand what the policy is there for, you know, about people to work, but there are people that can’t work,” he said. “So those are the people that are falling between the cracks now… After working my whole life, I’d like to see, you know, my country is able to get something back to me.”