Kandie Carter and Alycya Henderson work for the Employee Benefits Administration (EBSA) in EBSA’s Benefits Advisor program. EBSA is responsible for protecting the integrity of private employee benefit plans that cover nearly 158 million workers, retirees, and their dependents, who rely on these plans for retirement, health, disability, and other benefits critical to the health and financial security of America’s workers. 

 

Alycya and Kandie are integral parts of the Benefits Advisor Program in EBSA’s Atlanta Regional Office (ARO). Since the beginning of FY 2021, ARO’s Benefits Advisor program recovered more than $76 million in employee benefits for plan participants and beneficiaries. Kandie, under Alycya’s supervision, is directly responsible for $6.5 million of those recoveries. During that time, Kandie also responded to nearly 3,000 of ARO’s 47,000 inquiries. 

 

As a result of their tireless work, a cancer victim and mother of three received expedited treatment and agreement from the plan that she would be placed on transplant lists both in Jacksonville and at Emory, as well as a committment that she would receive the transplant at whichever facility was ready first. In addition, Kandie and Alycya made sure that the participant’s lodging expenses in Jacksonville were covered as promised, after the plan initially balked at paying the expense it had forced her to incur by refusing to cover her treatment near her children at home in Atlanta. They also protected her interests by working with the hospital to get a covered prescription for chemotherapy after the plan initially denied the large expense for her chemotherapy medication. 

 

Even now, after the participant has received a successful transplant, they continue to work with a team of EBSA personnel who are working for systemic reforms by the plan and insurance company to ensure that others won’t have to go through the same experience that this one vulnerable participant endured.