In the summer of 2024, Elizabeth Nicholas’s oncologist called her with bad news. For months, after being diagnosed with breast cancer at just 36, she had endured a devastating, invasive form of chemotherapy. Now, her insurance company was refusing to pay for a milder form of treatment—one that would not continue to strip her of her dignity and her long red hair. Stuck in a feedback loop of automated responses and confusing billing systems, Nicholas was fed up. So she went ahead and emailed the CEO of her health insurance company, in a last-ditch effort to appeal to a human in this utterly inhumane system. Today, in an exclusive essay for VF, Nicholas reflects on reckoning with the realities of navigating American health care, in the throes of her illness.
Elsewhere, as the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Diane Sawyer and David Muir revisit the horrors of that day in an interview with Savannah Walsh. In a dispatch from the Venice Film Festival, Chris Murphy sits down with the Musk documentarian, Alex Gibney, for an exclusive interview about his revelatory four-hour documentary.
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