What do you think happens if you accidentally pay a few cents less than your insurance premium states? Most would probably believe that at most you would just have to pay off the remaining balance in a timely fashion. If you ask the Branco family, however, they'll tell you that you may end up dying.

Sergio Branco, 33, of New Jersey was recently diagnosed with leukemia, but was given some news that many sufferers of the disease can only dream of. He found a donor with a ten-point bone marrow match, the best possible kind. There was only one small problem: two months before he was to receive treatment, Branco's insurance was pulled.

The reason? A mere 26 cents. His wife Mara had accidentally written a check for $518 to Paychex, the third party administrator that handles Branco's insurance. Because the check was not for the $518.26 that the Brancos were billed, Paychex had Branco's insurance discontinued. 

It wouldn't have even been an issue if Branco hadn't been fired by his boss Russell Reid after three months of missing work due to his illness. Branco was subsequently put on the COBRA insurance program that would require him to pay the $518.26 premium. Once the mishap occurred, however, a bureaucratic mess soon followed.

Paychex refused to receive any more payments for the premium as per Reid's instructions. Mara called Reid's HR Rich Gross in an attempt to explain the situation, as at the current time her husband was no longer eligible for the life-saving treatment he needed.

"The whole time [Gross] said Paychex is giving me false information," Mara told the Star-Ledger. "I told him if he'd just make a phone call everything would be alright. He said he'd see what he could do."

Well, Gross never did anything to help the Brancos, nor did the Department of Labor. Whether this was simply an example of bureaucratic inefficiency or a more wicked game of an insurance company shaving as many costs as legally possible, we may never know. Luckily, after much worry and delay, there was a happy ending to all of this.

"The Department of Labor said the company will reinstate him from May till now," Mara Branco explained. "They said the company did it wrong. I am super happy. It's like a weight has lifted off my shoulder. It's better than winning the lottery."

It should be noted that Paychex didn't rectify the situation until after the case had received a significant amount of attention from the press. The Brancos have decided not to pursue legal recourse, though they very well could. Instead they are just happy to have Sergio on track for a successful surgery. His transplant is scheduled for Aug. 16.