Her name is passed from one desperate family to another like an amulet.

In phone conversations and online chat rooms, she’s mentioned at moments when the devout might call on a patron saint. A baby born with a deformed skull? “Call Laurie.’’ An impossibly expensive cancer treatment? “Call Laurie.’’

Laurie Todd isn’t a doctor or a lawyer or a hospital chaplain. She’s a 66-year-old former massage therapist. Most of the time, she sounds cheerful and efficient. But if someone tries to pull the wool over her eyes, her voice gets low and a little threatening. “Do you know what I do for a living?’’ she asks. “I’m known as the Insurance Warrior.’’

The military metaphor is apt. When a health insurance company refuses to pay for a medical procedure, Todd goes to battle on behalf of the patient from her apartment outside Seattle.

She researches the scientific evidence behind the treatment. She parses the fine print of insurance policies. She scours the Internet for the phone numbers of the company’s top executives and coaches clients on when to call and what to say. Her strategy seems to be working: By her own count, she has won 165 of the 169 cases she’s fought.

“I’m sitting here in my pajamas making decision-makers who get $20 million a year do the right thing,’’ she said.

There are all sorts of reasons insurers might deny coverage: They might call a treatment experimental or not medically necessary, or insist that a local doctor in their network do the work.

Many health economists argue that insurers are right to deny coverage of some procedures to reduce America’s astronomical health care costs. But even they agree with Todd about one thing: The system is so hard to navigate that the typical patient feels powerless when facing denials.

“Health insurance is completely byzantine,’’ said George Loewenstein, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University. “Even insurance executives themselves . . . have trouble making sense of the monster they’ve created.’’

That’s where Todd comes in.

“I would be a widow if not for her,’’ said Diana Lentz.

When Lentz’s husband, Matthew, was diagnosed with cancer, their insurance company would pay only if he went to a local surgeon who had little experience with the procedure he needed. The Lentzes wrote an appeal themselves, demanding Matthew be treated by an expert. It was rejected. They enlisted Todd’s help, but she, too, was rejected.

Only when Todd and the Lentzes spoke to a room of insurance executives and lawyers was the coverage approved.

Todd attributes her success to her master’s in 18th-century French literature. Her lengthy appeals interweave technical arguments with vivid details that make a patient’s story come alive.

“I wouldn’t win them if I took a legal approach. I win them because I take a literary approach,’’ she said.

Todd studied French, and, because she was good at ­languages, her guidance counselor told her to become a teacher. She did, but didn’t like it much.

Then in 2004 while working as a massage therapist in Seattle, Todd fell ill. She started feeling dog tired even before she put her hands on a patient’s back. Then she realized her belly was getting bigger.

She went to a doctor who said she was fine. But her symptoms worsened, and in March 2005, she was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer and rushed into surgery.

That diagnosis wasn’t right either. She had appendix cancer, and it spread to her abdominal cavity, creating tumors so voluminous there were tumors left even after 15 pounds were scooped out during the operation.

Her oncologist said there was no treatment. She decided to do her own research.

“I learned that there was a certain surgeon in Washington, D.C., who stood head and shoulders above the rest,’’ Todd said.

But her insurer would not pay for him because he was out-of-network. Contracting with certain hospitals allows insurers to keep the price for each service reasonable.

To Todd the decision seemed like a death sentence. She knew this surgery was intricate and learned a surgeon got the best outcomes only after performing the procedure at least 150 times.

She wasn’t impressed by the in-network surgeon. “I said, ‘How many of these surgeries have you done?’ and he goes, ‘Six.’ And I said, ‘How are your patients doing?’ He said, ‘Don’t know, don’t follow ‘em.’ And I said, ‘Thank you very much, I’m out of here.’?’’

Todd booked her surgery in D.C. But she was self-employed, had almost no money, and was too sick to work. The surgery could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“I wasn’t going to die because my insurance company refused to pay,’’ she said. And so she set about writing an appeal.

She read the insurance company’s website. She created a flow chart of the organization. She read everything the library had on insurance law, every article she could find on appendix cancer. Then she began to write.

“Treatments are denied with words,’’ she said. “And denials are overturned with words.’’

She estimates that her entire hospital stay cost $347,000 — and her insurance company paid for everything but $9.

While recovering, she received a call from a man named Bob. He had appendix cancer and needed the same surgery. His insurance company was refusing to pay for it — saying the procedure was experimental. He’d heard from a support group that Laurie had just won an appeal. Could she help?

Using her appeal as a template, she wrote a document for Bob. “He called me three days later, and he said, ‘Laurie, they are going to pay.’ And my joy was immense.’’

That was the first of 20 appeals she wrote that year; at first, her clients were all appendix cancer patients.

As she started ringing up wins, her confidence grew. In 2007, she wrote a how-to book and traveled the nation to speak at Rotary Clubs and cancer conferences.

Soon she was getting calls from other patients. She took on only the ones, she said, that had “a mountain of science’’ behind them.

By then, she was earning a living writing appeals. Todd won’t talk about her fees, but former clients usually paid between $1,000 and $2,000.

“Best $2,000 I ever spent,’’ said Lisa Frank of Anaheim, Calif.

Her daughter had a severe form of Tourette syndrome. The tics came on with such violence that when she was 13, she fractured her own hip. The pain, Frank said, made her daughter suicidal.

The insurance company wouldn’t pay for the experimental deep-brain stimulation that some doctors recommended.

Todd won Frank over with a single question: What do you think “experimental’’ means? Frank gave her a definition. “No,’’ Todd said, “that’s not what experimental means. It means whatever your insurance company wants it to mean.’’

Frank became an acolyte. She followed all Todd’s instructions — even when Todd told her they would wait until a week before her daughter’s surgery date to start working on the appeal.

That is part of Todd’s strategy. If you file an appeal months in advance, it becomes just another pile of paper. Wait until you’re down to the wire, and your story has drama.

Todd identifies 14 executives to target for the appeal. Some from the insurance company, some from the patient’s employer, because most Americans have self-funded plans, which means that the employer is the one paying.

She includes a few “outside eyes’’: usually members of the insurance company’s board of directors. She picks them carefully: “I like presidents of universities, because they might be a little more impartial.’’

Todd first lays out the facts of the illness, sparing little. She wrote, for instance, about the debilitating tics that wracked Frank’s daughter, from biting her mouth to losing control of her bowels. She wrote of the social isolation. And of the 28 prescription drugs that had been tried, many of which had powerful side effects but provided little help.

Todd then picks apart the insurer’s reason for denying coverage. In the Frank case, she mocked it for using “the coy new insurance company phrase ‘Medical studies we have seen.’?’’

After scouring the research, she wrote, she believed the company “would be hard-pressed to produce these mysterious medical studies that show that deep brain stimulation is used to treat Tourette’s, but is not suitable for Samantha’s ‘circumstances.’?’’

She likes to send her appeals to insurers on Sunday afternoons. The next morning, she and her client start what she calls “the phone attack.’’

Frank couldn’t have asked for a better general. The insurance company capitulated, covering her daughter’s brain stimulation and the subsequent antibiotics and follow-up surgeries. The treatment was a success.

“I never thought my daughter would ever be able to finish school, to learn to drive, let alone to have a date,’’ said Frank. “Now she has a part-time job, she’s a senior, she has a boyfriend, she’s a wonderful guitar player.’’

Patients can demand an external review of their case. In states that tabulate such statistics, a third to a half of denials get overturned by independent review boards. But it’s hard to navigate that system alone.

“You have the right to independent medical review, but how good are you going to be at taking advantage of it if you’ve got cancer?’’ said Dustin Berger, an attorney in Wyoming who has written about health insurance appeals.

Every health system rations care one way or another. And some might say that a warrior like Todd is sucking the system dry. To her, that analysis is backwards: She believes she gets patients the treatments that have the best chance of working, instead of wasting time — and the insurers’ money — on less effective interventions.

“I’m the insurance company’s best friend,’’ said Todd. “I’m saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars by finding the patient the best treatment for them.’’

Eric Boodman can be reached at eric.boodman@ statnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ericboodman. Follow Stat on Twitter @statnews.