Need help finding medical resources

My good friend Adam learned yesterday that his sleep apnea was not just sleep apnea. It was also a severe heart problem. He went in for pre-op testing for an unrelated procedure, and when they did the EKG and blood testing, they found out he'd had a heart attack. After more testing, he needs to have bypass surgery.

He lost his job last February and has no health insurance right now. The social worker is going to work on fast-tracking his disability claim and that will take care of the insurance issue.

Do any of you have suggestions on resources that I can hook him up with? We podcasted together for 2 years on LucasCast (we met on LucasForums), and I'm thinking of setting up a site that his family can use to post news and receive comments (kind of like what CaringBridge.org does), and also to put a Paypal donation jar for him.

Thanks in advance for all the ideas!

Here's what I know from the whole disability and insurance thing. Unfortunately some of what I have to say isn't good but how it works. Once approved for social security disabily (SSDI), one has to wait until the 25th month of the approved SSDI time before medicare kicks in. For instance, I applied end of June 2011, got approved a year later, but was back tracked to the approval date. So my medicare, which thankfully I don't need thanks to the husband's job, can kick in for July 2013. For my SSDI I had great help from a company called SSDI that did all the paperwork, I just had to answer questions on the phone. Of course, my LTD gave me this free, not sure how much it costs otherwise. However, I highly recommend Allsup to anyone that wants good support getting through the SSDI hoopla. Of course, this does not resolve the immediate issue. Now if he is in poverty level status, the social worker should be able to work out medicaid, but that can be pretty tricky. I know my parents had to go through hoops for that. They look at what you own besides what you have made over several years. I do know they can push this pretty fast, however, because they did for my dad due to his needing treatment for cancer. I will say that bypass surgery is quite the ordeal, but they've really improved the process. It's even better than what they did in 2001 when my husband had it done. I'm sure they are directing him to a reputable cardiologist and surgeon for this in the process of him working out cost. I know things should be worked out soon for him because of the condition. I know this does not give any quick answers, but at least is the way things go per what I know of all this insurance, disability and the procedure he needs.

I'm applying for disability myself due to my vision going downhill on me and not meeting the state minimum for a driver's license any longer. So, I'm sharing with him my experiences on that. Since he's unemployed, I hope he can get Medicaid quickly. There are some outstanding hospitals in the Chicago region, though a lot of docs have dropped it since the reimbursement from IL is something like 6 months behind.

I am very sorry to hear about your friend! As a disclaimer, I haven't done any research on this site/company, but when a girl I went to high school with suffered a severe stroke shortly after her 25th birthday they started a campaign on http://www.alittlebirdie.org/ to help her and her family.