National Nurses United

Profile:3 6/7/07 2:51 PM Page 21 o Fronts BY LUCIA HWANG It's tough enough to battle cancer. But RN Cynthia Campbell found herself also waging war against the health insurance industry. Is this any way to treat patients? Cynthia Campbell is 53 years old, a longtime registered nurse, and is right in the thick of fighting two rare, aggressive cancers. And her health insurance runs out on July 19. If you stop to fully process Campbell's entire story – of how she came to discover that she had cancer, of how it is that she came to be insured on a short-term policy that she has no chance of renewing, and of how it is that no insurance company will now touch her with a 50-foot pole—you can't help but come to one conclusion: any one of us could be her. Campbell's experience also highlights the dire need of all Americans for guaranteed healthcare that covers us regardless of preexisting medical conditions, our work situations, or our ability to pay. A recovery room RN for some 30 years, mainly in the South and in Southern California, Campbell moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in August 2005 with her husband Allen, a semi-retired former commercial and private airplane pilot. She worked first as a traveler, then became per diem at University of California San Francisco Medical Center while she waited for a full-time, permanent position to open up. They settled into a cozy apartment in the city's Sunset district, close to her work. Allen, 68, gets health insurance through military disability and Medicare, and they bought Campbell a short-term policy through Blue Cross of California to tie her over until she went on staff at UCSF. The job opening, however, proved elusive. Before they knew it, it was June 2006 and her insurance was going to soon expire. Campbell called up Blue Cross and asked about extending her policy. To her surprise, the agent told her that if she had used the policy even once, they would not extend. Yes, she had used the insurance, in a manner of speaking. She had gone to an urgent care clinic that May about a urinary tract infection, once to get diagnosed and again to correct her prescription for antibiotic medication. But that was it. Her whole life, Campbell says she had never had any major medical problems. Because the deductible on the policy was so high, she had paid for the visits out of her own pocket. Still, she had shown her card. So now, no insurance. "They weren't even out a penny and they wouldn't let me extend the policy," said Campbell. Dressed in khakis, a comfortable cardigan, and a magenta scarf tied sideways around her nearly bald head, the normally calm Campbell actually raises her voice. "It's like going into M AY 2 0 0 7 a restaurant, and paying for a meal, but if you ever dare expect them to serve it, you're never going to be allowed back in again." With the help of her husband, Campbell found an insurance broker who set her up with yet another short-term policy, this time through Blue Shield. Still anticipating that Campbell would soon go on staff at UCSF, they prepaid only one year's worth of premiums. On Friday July 21, 2006, Campbell felt out of sorts as she finished her shift. Over that weekend, she thought she had bad indigestion. But then her abdomen started swelling and distending. It ballooned larger and larger until Allen took her to the emergency room on Monday. There, they learned some shocking news: Campbell had a cancerous, stage IV tumor in her belly called rhabdomysarcoma. It was one of the biggest ones the doctor had ever seen. Later, doctors would discover that she also had adenosarcoma. The survival rate for this diagnosis is lower than 20 percent. "Learning you have cancer is such an overwhelming piece of information to process," said Campbell. "You can't think." Within a week, Campbell had surgery to remove the tumor and then started a series of grueling chemotherapy treatments. She made it to number seven before the doctors called off the chemo because they weren't sure if she'd live through it. "They said I had fatal fatigue," said Campbell. "I was so tired. I felt like a million cells were saying, 'I'm dying, I'm dying.' Sometimes when I exhaled, I thought I would just osmose into the air." If the diagnosis and treatment weren't devastating enough, the couple received more disturbing news: the hospital wasn't getting paid because the insurance company claimed Campbell wasn't insured. Reams of bills and statements started arriving in their mailbox. "I quit looking when they hit $800,000," said Allen. Allen wasn't about to burden his wife with this paperwork nightmare, so he tried to sort it out himself. The nine-month struggle to get Blue Shield to pay UCSF, and for the various parties to cooperate with each other, sorely tested the limits of Allen's patience and sanity. He learned that the hospital typically sent documentation and bills to Blue Shield's big claims processing offices in Chino, Calif. But for some reason, Campbell's paperwork needed to be processed through Beattyville, Ky. Chino would reject the hospital's claims, saying Campbell had no policy. But no matter how many times Allen called, the hospital would keep billing Chino. To make matters worse, claims W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G REGISTERED NURSE 21

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