When Bobbie Whiteman moved to the United States from Britain, she did not give medical insurance a thought. She had no cover for six months and it was only when she was offered a job at Variety, the Hollywood newspaper, that it became an issue. It was part of her salary package and she had to decide between several schemes the company had on offer.
Seven years later, in 2007, the value of the scheme she chose became all too evident. Suffering from persistent backache – which doctors initially attributed to being “unfit” – she was given an MRI scan which showed she had a string of cancerous tumors down her back.