This is part 2 of an ongoing Pulitzer-nominated series. Click here for the other parts in the series, or to discuss the series as a whole.

“I felt like we were targeted,” said Gloria Bent, 78, the widow of Gary Bent, a retired physics professor at the University of Connecticut who needed rehab care after undergoing brain surgery to remove a cancerous lesion. She said she successfully appealed two of NaviHealth’s attempts to cut off payment for her husband’s stay in a skilled nursing facility in July 2022. But the company’s third denial stuck, and her husband was sent home with a fever and throbbing pain in his head and neck.

She gave him Tylenol, and tried to keep him comfortable.

But “the next morning, we could not rouse him,” Bent said. “When we were able to rouse him, he did not know who he was, where he was, or who I was.” She called for emergency help, and her husband was taken to a hospital, where he spent three weeks recovering from bacterial meningitis. He died in March 2023 at age 82.