Life Denied: Nurses, Family of Sick Teen March on Health Insurance Company
Tuesday
17-year-old boy needs cancer treatment, PacifiCare denies
CYPRESS, Calif., March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Registered nurses, friends and
concerned community members will join the family of Nick Colombo marching on
the corporate offices of health insurance giant PacifiCare in Orange County
this Tuesday to protest the denial of a life-saving cancer treatment for the
17-year-old, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing
Committee (CNA/NNOC) announces.
The family and the nurses are also urgently appealing to the public to
call PacifiCare at 714-828-1821 and demand they provide the care Nick needs.
Supporters can deliver the same message to PacifiCare spokesman Tyler
Mason at 714-226-3530
What: March on PacifiCare
When: Tuesday, March 25, 10:00 am
Where: PacifiCare Headquarters,
5701 Katella Ave, Cypress, 90630
"My brother Nick Colombo is just 17 years old, and he has suffered with a
painful bone cancer for four years," said Ricky Colombo, Nick's 19-year old
brother. "Our insurance company, PacifiCare, denied Nick radiation treatment
available in Kansas City which can save his life. He has exhausted all other
treatment options but nothing worked. This is our last effort and this
procedure has worked before with people in Nick's situation. We are now
standing up for Nick, and telling PacifiCare that what they are doing is
wrong."
Nick's brother Ricky asked for assistance in the patient stories section
of the Guaranteed Healthcare, a Web site maintained by CNA/NNOC to document
the stories of real people harmed by the health insurance companies.
Read his full story here:
http://www.guaranteedhealthcare.org/your_story/save-my-brother-nick-pacificare
"PacifiCare and the State's refusal of Nick's cancer treatments --
overruling the urgent appeals of an array of doctors and nurses -- is
indicative of the failures of the healthcare plans offered up in many states
including California," said Geri Jenkins UCSD Medical Center RN and an elected
member of the CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents.
The treatments were deemed medically necessary by Nick's doctors, but
California's Managed Care oversight board recently sided with PacifiCare, a
decision that Nick's caregivers, family and community have vowed to overturn.
PacifiCare was recently fined $3.5 million by the state of California for
systematic mishandling of at least 133,000 claims like Nick's. The company is
facing up to $1.3 billion in addition penalties, for illegally denying care,
and a Department of Managed Health Care investigation found that the
corporation wrongly denied claims in 30 percent of its HMO cases in 2006-7.
In 2005, PacifiCare was taken over by the nation's largest health insurer,
UnitedHealth, which is expected to grow its profits 13 percent in 2007-8,
according to recent reports.
The diversion of care dollars from Nick Colombo to PacifiCare profits is
direct evidence of the need for immediate ate and fundamental healthcare
reform. Every person in this country deserves guaranteed healthcare, which
can only be achieved by replacing wasteful private insurance with non-profit,
universal, single-payer coverage, such as Medicare for All. U.S. Rep. John
Conyers is the author of H.R. 676, the national bill for guaranteed
healthcare, and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing
Committee is a lead sponsor of the bill.
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee is
America's largest RN union, representing 80,000 critical-care nurses from
every state.
SOURCE California Nurses Association
Liz Jacobs, +1-510-273-2232, cell, +1-510-435-7674, or Shum Preston,
+1-510-273-2276, both for California Nurses Association
