His Business Is Personal

Trey Mills can still hear the sound of his mother’s scream—the unforgettable, high-pitched sound of fear, disbelief, uncertainty and heartbreak, all in one. It more than startled Mills, then a Mid-Carolina High School student just back from an invigorating summer at Boys State, where his future was looking bright and his basketball game not too shabby. He was sitting in an emergency room while his mother listened as the doctor delivered results from blood work taken after Mills complained of night sweats, blackouts and back pain. His appetite had plummeted, and when his aunt playfully poked him in the stomach, which made him—a robust football player—bowl over in pain, his mother, an emergency room nurse, knew something was up. 

He had acute lymphocytic leukemia. “I suddenly went from being a normal kid having a blast at Boys State to a prognosis of having maybe two weeks to live,” Mills recalls. 

As if his mother’s outcry weren’t enough to sear the events into his memory, the doctor proceeded to give Mills an excruciating bone marrow aspiration, boring deep into his hip bone without anesthesia. He was immediately admitted to the hospital, and began three rounds of chemotherapy plus spinal taps and radiation.

“Miraculously, I went into remission,” says Mills. Today he’s a healthy and extremely grateful father of two with a thriving law practice at Trammell & Mills. But what stuck with him most is how harrowing it was for his family to battle the insurance company over every medical bill. 

“I remember the phone ringing constantly that summer and my mom fighting on the phone all the time,” he says. “Blue Cross was denying almost every claim.” The family had health insurance, but were still told they owed $800,000 for Mills’ treatment. 

While the cancer has not come back, the outrage from having to battle insurance during a time of intense vulnerability and fear has been recurring. A similar scenario played out when his mother was dying of lung cancer. Mills was a law student at Mercer at the time, determined to graduate and take on insurance companies in court. But the experience of his mother being denied short-term disability, despite years of working for Lexington Medical Center and battling a fatal illness, only added bitter fuel to his flame. 

“This is personal to me, and personal for a reason,” Mills says. “Quite simply: I hate insurance companies. Their game is to deny, delay and defend, and it’s purposeful. People die because of it all the time, by not getting the treatment they need. It’s a broken system on both ends, but why does the hospital give you a bill for $42,000 if they know they’re going to accept just $3,500? It’s all gamesmanship.” 

Patients tend to lose the game, unless they have advocates like Mills on their side. He relishes the fight. 

“I’ll take them to trial over a mere $70,” he says. “Insurance companies profit from people’s ignorantly believing them. I’m committed to educating people that you must fight back, and we can prevail. Otherwise, they treat you as if you’re the one at-fault instead of being the patient or victim.” 

Mills feels fortunate to have found his practice niche. But as he knows all too well, it’s often a matter of life and death—or at least livelihood and foreclosure—for those on the other side of denied claims.

“When I was 17, I didn’t think I’d see age 45,” Mills says. “We’re all a flash in the pan, here for a very short while. I’m fortunate I found the path I did; I know who I am and what my purpose is.”