A Nebraska man needs a new heart and his insurance will pay most of the half-million dollar cost, but there's a catch. The transplant can't be done in Omaha, even though the Nebraska Medical Center is ready once a donor is found.

Skipper Fuchs is fighting for his life and wants the battlefield closer to home. The heart patient must be flown out of state to save his life.

“After the treatment is over if I had it in Omaha I could drive back and forth 'cause we're only four hours." Skip farms near Oxford, Nebraska.

Instead of the Nebraska Medical Center, his insurance provider says Skip must travel to a transplant center in St. Louis to receive full coverage.

“It's incredible that they will not budge,” says wife Rita. “Other insurance companies do, but there is no compassion here."

Stay in Omaha for the transplant and he'll have to pay $300,000 of the cost. “Of course it's adding to the stress,” says daughter-in-law Trish Fuchs. “His family's here, everything that he knows and loves.”

The Fuchs family has been told by World Insurance that the 50 heart transplants performed at the at the Nebraska Medical Center so far are not enough to provide the track record necessary to grant full coverage, but the Med Center's heart expert disagrees.

“I don't think this is in the best patient interest,” says Dr. Ioana Dumitru. “I think this is purely monetary. We have the same outcomes at the center here as St. Louis does."

Insurance will pay for an air ambulance to take skip to St. Louis where he'll wait for a donor heart. After the transplant, he'll stay there for follow-up exams and the family says insurance will only pay $5,000 in living expenses.

It also means family can't visit him very often, being nine hours away for who knows how long. “If you don't go down there you are going to die and if you stay and fight it you may die before you ever get it done,” says Skip.

Worried his heart won't last in a dispute with his insurance provider, this Nebraska cowboy decided the move to a St. Louis hospital is better than riding off into the sunset.

Six On Your Side received a statement from World Insurance about its policy, saying it cannot address this specific case due to privacy laws.

World Insurance says transplant procedures are only covered at hospitals designated as a “center of excellence." It defines those as accredited facilities with proven outstanding quality. Some examples the company considers as "centers of excellence" include the Mayo Clinic, Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and Loyola University in Chicago. It did not mention UNMC.

Skip and his family say it's ironic the insurance company that won't pay full coverage for a transplant in Omaha is headquartered in Omaha.