How America Tried to Kill Me and Failed

America today is no place to be old or sick.

Dear Reader,

Remember those old "MY SUMMER VACATION" compositions we had to write when we got back to school in September? This year I would have flunked that assignment.  Here I sit in Provence, France on October 1, 2008 wondering what the hell happened to my summer. 

Although I live in this summertime paradise, looking back, I can recall no impromptu jaunts to bikini beaches, no refreshing dips in the Mediterranean, no gourmet meals in elegant restaurants, not a single barbecue or picnic or walk in the woods. All I remember doing between July and now is hitting these damnable keys thousands of time every day in order to rewrite the first book I ever wrote (in 1975!!!) about Chinese Astrology - in French!

What I did with my summer could just as well have been done in the winter. I stayed indoors. I hardly ever got out of my nightgowns. (the better to keep me indoors writing). I visited four different peoples' houses for pleasant French family dinners. I drove to Bargemon (a nearby village) once to have lunch with my California friend Elizabeth who has a lovely house with a handsome swimming pool and a sweet new French husband to match. So much for summer entertainment.

Oh yes and besides writing, I trudged to about 10 different doctors, hospitals, clinics, radiology centers and blood test labs in pursuit of an overall picture of my current health.

As you may remember, I had breast cancer twice. The first time was 30 years ago.

I lived in the States in 1978. In Sag Harbor, Long Island with my two beautiful daughters. I had bought a house there with the advance on a new book I was to write. Our own house! In America. The kids loved living in America. It was more fun than France. School was easier and there was more ice cream there.

In short, we were a happy little trio.

Then came the lump on Mommy's left breast and then came the déluge.

My first breast cancer operation took place in New York City in July of 1978. When I got home from New York Hospital, I received a computerized post card telling me that my excellent health insurance company - Blue Cross/Blue Shield of NY - had cancelled my excellent health insurance policy. 

I thought there must be some mistake. Why in the name of good common sense would an insurance company cancel someone's paid-up policy just after they had had a mastectomy and were on the brink of a year's chemotherapy? I mean, why bother to buy insurance if it cancels you when you get sick?

It took me months to find out the answer. Of course I had to get a lawyer. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New York would neither talk to me on the telephone nor would they answer my letters.

For the sake of brevity, I will tell you now why they said they cancelled me.

Blue Cross claimed that there was information in my hospital record which indicated that I had had breast cancer 3 years earlier - hence, their excuse was that I had a pre-existing condition and had therefore lied when I applied for the insurance two years before.

My lawyer friend (a saint!) told them that if I had had cancer 3 years before and had not been treated, I would very likely not have been alive to lie on any insurance applications.

But they didn't want to hear what my lawyer had to say. In those days, (no joke) a patient was not allowed to obtain his or her hospital record. Only a lawyer (or the person's doctor) was allowed to have copies. So my lawyer friend went directly to the hospital to fetch a copy of the record in question.

It was true. In the record, was a scribbly entry in scrawly handwriting that said "Ca  1976"  or something very close to that. (I have all the files here somewhere) This utterly false entry was written by a very sleepy young man in a white coat. His name was/is Ralph Pennino.

Ralph was handsome and swaggery young. He had come around with a clipboard and flapping white coat when I was first in the hospital bed the day before my operation. His job was to take my history. Ralph asked me a slew of questions. Did I have a history of heart disease or Diabetes? What childhood illnesses and surgical interventions had I suffered? etc.  The normal questions.

I answered all of them honestly.

He then asked if there was cancer in my family. I told him that my sister had died of breast cancer in 1976. He wrote down something. The poor boy appeared to be asleep on his feet. I figured he was one of those overworked 24 hour-on-call intern people. But, it turns out that this dashing Ralph Pennino character was not a doctor. Ralph Pennino was just a cute medical student on loan from Georgetown Medical School to New York Hospital for a summer's apprenticeship in ruining peoples' lives.

Blue Cross had used Ralph's false information to cancel my contract.

When I found out that the error was Ralph Pennino's fault, I called Georgetown Medical School. The operator very kindly gave me Ralph's home telephone number. I was hopeful. It seemed simple. Ralph could just say he made a booboo on my record and Blue Cross would relent. So I called him.

"Hi Ralph." said I. "This is Suzanne White. Remember me? New York Hospital last July?" (It was nearly October by this time)

"Oh yes, Suzanne. I do recall. How are you?" said young Ralph.

"Terrible. You wrote something in my hospital record that Blue Cross used to cancel my insurance policy."

"Really? That's not possible." He said.  

"It's not only possible, Ralph.  You did it. You even signed the form." I said.

"Wow. I am really sorry."

"It's not enough to be sorry, Ralph. You have to write a letter to Blue Cross and cc: me and New York Hospital on that letter. And you have to do it right away. I am on the verge of starting one year of chemotherapy. I need my insurance back. I haven't got the money to pay all these bills that the hospital is sending me for everything from the operations to anesthetists to x-rays and blood tests and surgeons and medicines. I just don't have the money." I explained. 

"What do you want me to say? "asked young Ralph.

"Just write and say that you made a mistake. Tell them that I did not have cancer before. That I  had never had cancer. Explain that you wrote down something that wasn't true by mistake."

"Oh I couldn't do that." Ralph told me. "It would ruin my medical career."

"Ralph," I said, as calmly as I could manage. "if you don't write that letter to Blue Cross, you will be ruining my life and my children's lives. I will lose my house and my career as an author will be over as well."

"I am sorry Suzanne. I just can't do that." Ralph asserted and rang off.

I went to my very senior surgeon from Sloan-Kettering/New York Hospital to ask him to put pressure on young Ralph Pennino and make him admit his mistake.

And what did my surgeon say?  "The boy can't write a letter like that, admitting a mistake on someone's hospital record. It would ruin his career." 

I probably should have shot the sheriff right then and there and promptly driven down to Washington and wrung the young Deputy's neck. (Thank you Eric Clapton)  But by the time I was ready to do that, I was retching up my innards after my first chemotherapy treatment - for which, by the way, I didn't  have the money to pay.

Did my children's rich father volunteer to help us? No. But that's another part of the story and it's too long to go into here.

Why I started this at all is to tell you that when I was so ill and had lost my house and everything else I owned (except the kids who were scared to death and still wonderfully helpful and kind to me during that awful time.) and had by some miracle completed the course of chemotherapy without dying, French friends sent me 3 one way tickets on Air France and told me to "Come home" to Paris.

We came back to Paris where we had always lived until 1976 and little by little, painfully, one step at a time, we got back on our collective feet. It took years. But we did it - together.

But hang on. The main reason I wanted you all to know this story is that when I got back to Paris in 1980, I discovered that the translation of my first book (L'Astrologie Chinoise = Chinese Astrology) was selling in France like crusty, warm morning croissants. Interestingly, that is exactly the same book that is being updated now by my Parisian publisher for re-publication in 2009. That's why all the frenzied rewriting was going on here in my nightgown in this house this summer and why I was a shut-in in Provence. 

Now let's go back to 1980. In France, a publisher is considered an employer and must pay a % of his author's income to the French National Health Insurance Company. Therefore, in 1980, I was an author whose publisher paid a small share of my royalties as a health care premium to the national health insurance company. I was obliged to pay in a % as well. I therefore qualified for the French National Health care system for myself and the kids. 

Through friends, I had found excellent doctors in Paris and was watched carefully by all of them. In 1981, they discovered I had cancer in the other breast. I was operated on for my second mastectomy at the Curie Institute in Paris. Everything (including operation, hospital, anesthesia, train fare, babysitters and a month in a plush rest facility in the south of France where I swam laps daily to recover the use of my arm) was 100% covered by the French Health insurance plan. Where the American insurance company had so ruthlessly tried to kill me, the French insurance company had graciously saved my life.

The French Universal Single Payer Health Care Company is why I am alive today. That same universal care insurance company enabled me this very summer to spend my precious leisure hours undergoing all those scans and sonograms and blood tests and electro cardiograms and Dopplers and colonoscopies and endoscopies etc. Thank you France. Because of your fabulous, generous, caring, loving, competent, humane and efficient Health Care System, thirty years after having had breast cancer, I am alive to write this all down.

Wouldn't it be comforting if everyone in America, rich and poor alike, could be unafraid to get sick or have a handicapped child or a serious paralyzing accident?

Wouldn't it be gorgeous to not have to take your feverish baby out into the cold and then wait hours in an emergency room full of sick people to get some care?

In France, the doctors make house calls. In America, if you can't pay the doctor, his bill collectors come and take your house away.

Americans, do yourselves a favor.  VOTE FOR OBAMA.

P.S.  We do not have higher taxes here in France because of universal health care. Health care has nothing to do with our taxes. Taxes are paid on earned income just as they are everywhere else. The French health system is nothing more or less than a huge insurance company run by the govt. Most everything medical is covered at least 80%. If you don't want to co-pay the 20%, you can buy an inexpensive private supplementary policy from a private insurance company. They will make up the difference. If you have one of 18 or 20 very serious or chronic illnesses, everything is covered 100% until you are well again. You pay premiums according to your income. Your employer pays in too. If you have questions about how our health care system works in France, jot me a line: suzanwhite@aol.com. I will be happy to answer. sw

P.P.S Many people who read this article which appeared on my web site wrote to me wanting to know where Ralph Pennino is today. Ralph is a respected plastic surgeon in Rochester, NY. Face lift anyone? sw