National Grassroots Group Takes Up Dying Girl's Cause

Main Category: Caregivers / Homecare
Article Date: 04 Feb 2005 - 18:00 PDT

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Charlotte's "Web" of a Battle Escalates with Insurer Great-West Over Denial of Home Nursing Care -

A firestorm of media attention is building around a dying girl named Charlotte and her struggle to receive nursing care at home rather than in the hospital. Today, following news coverage by local and regional television stations earlier this week, a national grassroots organization has weighed in. It has launched an Internet campaign to increase pressure on Charlotte's family's insurance company to "do the right thing."

Multiple television news stories about Charlotte's family and their predicament aired throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, northern California and Alaska on stations KING-5, KONG 6/16 and the regional Northwest Cable News channel on February 1. The Colorado-based insurer, Great-West Life & Annuity, has taken the unusual step of denying home nursing care to three year-old Charlotte. In nearly all similar cases, according to Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, insurers will convert benefits to allow terminally ill children to spend their final weeks and months at home rather than in a hospital.

"It's heartless," observed Kathleen O'Connor, founder and CEO of CodeBlueNow!, the national grassroots organization that has taken up Charlotte's cause. "Great-West will pay for hospital care but not less costly care at home," she said. "Where other insurers almost always convert benefits to allow for home nursing care, Great-West has abandoned Charlotte's family when they needed coverage the most. Ironically, they would provide home care if she were not dying. That's simply un-American."

CodeBlueNow!, with members in 46 states, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that uses the Internet to advocate for fundamental health care reform. To help Charlotte's family pressure Great-West, the organization has begun a "viral marketing" campaign, sending e-mail to thousands of supporters nationwide. The e-mail urges recipients to take action and tell a friend. It directs them to a website (www.codebluenow.org/charlotte) to write, fax or e-mail Great-West's CEO, calling on the company to let Charlotte receive nursing care at home. The e-mail also includes a 60-second video with shots of Charlotte and her family.

Despite onslaught of negative attention, Great-West has so far refused to budge. In a statement to KING-5, a company spokesperson claimed that Charlotte's family has been told "three times" that home nursing care is not covered by their policy. Great-West has avoided responding directly to reports that other insurers would convert benefits under similar circumstances.

"Charlotte's situation is emblematic of a larger national crisis facing American families and their employers," remarked O'Connor, who is also publisher of The O'ConnorReport, author of The Buck Stops Nowhere: Why America's Health Care is all Dollars and No Sense, and 26-year veteran of health care analysis. "This could happen to anyone in America. With half of all bankruptcies due to medical bills, our flawed health care system is driving Americans out of house and home. Just this year, Tennessee cut 323,000 from its health care rolls." O'Connor argues that CodeBlueNow!'s nonpartisan efforts to reform the system are more needed now than ever.

Charlotte is fortunate in one respect. The State of Washington's Department of Developmental Disabilities was able to provide a special one-time exemption that allows 16 hours per day of home nursing care through a Medicaid-funded program. However, her family must augment this care with costly high-risk insurance on top of their monthly premiums to Great-West.

As the e-mails and letters continue to pile up at Great-West's headquarters, CodeBlueNow! vows to "turn up the heat" until the company agrees to cover Charlotte's home nursing care. "They don't know what's about to hit them," says O'Connor. "You don't mess with a dying three year old girl. And you don't mess with a family that simply wants to spend time with their child, instead of filing insurance appeals. Great-West is about to learn this lesson the hard way."

About CodeBlueNow!

CodeBlueNow! is a non-partisan, national 501(c)3 non-profit organization that is mobilizing grassroots efforts to transform the financing, delivery and management of the American health care system, by assuring that the public has a voice in shaping health care policy. The organization has grown from 30 people in October 2003 to having thousands of supporters in 46 states and an online radio show. More information is online at: http://www.codebluenow.org.

For More Information Contact:
Kathleen O'Connor, 206-650-2750, kathleen@codebluenow.org
Matt Eldridge, 206-331-2868, matt@codebluenow.org
http://www.codebluenow.org

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