JustHealth

Mom's Hunger Strike Succeeds

Posted: May 2, 2003 at 6:33 p.m.

BAY AREA (KRON) -- To what end would a parent go to help a child? A Peninsula woman resorted to a hunger strike in a battle over health insurance coverage for her disabled son. It took a while to get results, but the drastic move apparently worked.

We first told you the story of Sally Gillette's desperate measures last November. She cut a lonely picture as she picketed her workplace while on a hunger strike in the rain last winter.

"I just couldn't get anywhere negotiating," she told us.

Sally was protesting her company's failure to extend health insurance benefits to her son, a paraplegic with life-threatening complications. Employer policies usually cover children as long as they're in school. When her son dropped out for health reasons, her health plan dropped him, but failed to notify him that he was eligible for COBRA.

COBRA is a law that allows you to keep your insurance at group rates when you lose your company coverage. You get it for 18 months, 36 months if you're a dependent too old for the employees plan, like Sally's child. Your employer and insurer must notify you when you're eligible. But Sally's employer didn't, leaving her with the full burden of his medical bills.

For help, she turned to John Metz, a consumer advocate with the California Consumer Healthcare Council. "The company acknowledged that the proper notice had not been sent out," he says, "so it's the right thing to do to take care of Jesse now."

Healthcare advocate John Metz helped Sally fight back. She refused the company's initial settlement of $60,000, but as both sides went back and forth last winter her paralyzed son's condition started deteriorating.

"His pain is so bad that he has to lay on his back with his knees pulled back all the time," she told us. "It's creating pressure sores that now have this antibiotic resistance staph that will kill him if he doesn't find a way to treat the pain so his legs can be straightened again."

"They need to go in there now. There is not a minute to lose, it's not about making a deal tomorrow," Metz said. His urgent lobbying, along with Contact 4's involvement, apparently paid off. Sally's employer just re-instated Jesse on her policy as a disabled dependant, retroactive all the way back to 1998 when he was dropped.