Morris Hilton suffers from debilitating migraines after sustaining severe head trauma when his house collapsed on him during a tornado. He is prescribed a medication approved by the FDA to treat cancer pain - not because he has cancer, but because after years of trying out various drugs to treat his condition, this is the only medication he has found to help alleviate his migraine symptoms.

Morris must pay thousands of dollars per year for this medication because his Medicare prescription drug program stopped paying for the drug, claiming his pain is not specifically “cancer” pain. Medicare won’t cover medications that are not FDA approved to treat alternative illnesses, even if preliminary tests show that they work. Health care analysts and government officials insist that there must be regulations regarding the use of experimental drugs, citing several cases where patients have suffered long-term negative, and even fatal effects from the use of experimental medications.

It’s quite common for doctors to prescribe medications to their patients that haven’t been approved by the FDA to treat their specific ailments. Yet patients on the Medicare drug program are being denied medications that their doctors can prescribe for any use, because they can’t afford to pay for their treatment out of pocket. The Medicare Rights Center, a health care advocacy group, is currently filing a case against the government to force them to revise their position on experimental drug coverage.