Cancer Legal Care

What it reported doing in 2025

Icare - a significant expansion of our work took place in 2020 with the creation of our icare program under the umbrella of our legal care program offerings. Icare (insurance claim advocacy and resolution) addresses the growing number of health insurance coverage denials due to many factors including shrinking networks and ever-changing pre-authorization requirements. Our goal with icare is to make a significant impact on the health and financial well-being of our clients by way of ensuring that their insurance covers what it should, and that hospital billing and coding errors are corrected so that our clients are not responsible for bills that are not theirs to pay. Since piloting this work in 2019, we have closed 176 complicated insurance matters with a 94% success rate for our clients. Of these closed matters, success included protecting or recovering $4,471,875.94 in health, disability, or life insurance benefits that had initially been denied to 85 of our clients by their insurance company. The individual client dollar amount ranges from $150 to $565,000, with an average recovery/protection of $52,610.31 per client. "your support means the world to me, and i truly couldn't have done it without you.""thank you so much for your support. It truly feels like someone is finally on our side, and my family and i deeply appreciate it.""thank you so much for all you are doing for me. It allows me to focus my energy on getting my health back on track. Don't know how i would handle all this without your help."our icare program provides services to clients on the full spectrum of assistance levels, from educating clients on protections of the law (such as the no surprises act and the Minnesota debt fairness act), explaining benefits and claim determinations, "coaching" clients through their own claim denial appeals, and providing full representation and claim denial appeal and/or medical billing dispute handling. We tackle a wide variety of claim denial and billing issues such as medical necessity, prior authorization, out-of-network, experimental and investigational procedures and medications, off-label medication use, billing coding errors, provider financial assistance, and general navigation of the interplay between medical treatment and the insurance claim process. Our model of providing these services free of charge protects our clients' financial stability by ensuring that they do not have to pay money to recover benefits or keep funds that are rightfully theirs to begin with. In addition to dealing with cancer and the stressors of insurance denials, our icare clients are facing incredible financial strain. Fully 29% of our icare clients are under 200% fpg (up from 24% in 2021), with another 18% in between 200%-300% fpg. All of the icare work is done at no charge and without any income eligibility limitations. Why?1. Very few families could afford an attorney's help in light of cancer's growing financial toxicity.2. Any barrier to reaching out or getting help more often than not becomes a non-starter for people who are at their physical, emotional, and financial breaking point. We know that insurance issues are at the top of the most stressful things our clients face.

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 67.5%; rating input score 67
• Program expense ratio: 69.5%; rating input score 70
• Fundraising efficiency: $6.47 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 22; 22nd percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
• Pay-setting controls: 2 of 6 controls in place; rating input score 33
  • Compensation committee: Missing
  • Independent consultant: Missing
  • Other Form 990s reviewed: Missing
  • Written employment contract: Missing
  • Compensation survey or study: Pass
  • Board or committee approval: Pass
• Foreign activity oversight: Limited
• Grant itemization coverage: Limited
• Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
• Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

• Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
• Governance controls: 8 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 100
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Pass
  • Document-retention policy: Pass
  • CEO compensation review process: Pass
  • Other executive compensation review process: NotApplicable
  • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
  • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
  • Audit committee oversight: Pass
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Pass

Sustainability

• Operating margin: 4.3%; rating input score 43; 43rd percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.48; rating input score 24; 24th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.18; rating input score 27; 27th percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 17.1%; rating input score 21; 21st percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: 11% per year; rating input score 100; 61st percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: 11.4% per year; rating input score 100; 65th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: 11.8% per year; rating input score 100; 61st percentile among comparable filings