Rally against medical insurers cites Frankfort man's plight

By William Lee
Southtown Star
January 16, 2008

Using the Rev. Martin Luther King's fight for equality as a jumping-off point on what would've been his 79th birthday, members of a nurses' union staged a rally Tuesday in downtown Chicago decrying corporate interference in health care.

The rally organized by the National Nurses Organizing Committee and the California Nurses Association outside of Cigna health care's offices in the 500 block of West Monroe Street featured a Southland mother and daughter waging a battle against the insurance industry.

"While my dad fights, UniCare has failed him, and it has failed my family," Jody Polka told two dozen demonstrators on the frigid afternoon.

Polka's father, Cyril Strezo, 58, of Frankfort, suffers from esophageal cancer that was initially treated with radiation and chemotherapy. When the cancer spread to his liver last fall, his oncologist prescribed two drugs for his treatment.

UniCare declined to pay the cost of the drugs - about $3,000 per week - calling them "experimental and/or investigative," despite the drugs having been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the 1990s.

But a recent article in the SouthtownStar spurred state Rep. Mary Flowers (D-Chicago) and the Illinois attorney general's office to bring pressure on UniCare, resulting in the insurer reversing its decision and agreeing to cover the cost of Strezo's drugs.

But the victory may have come too late. The family learned last fall that Strezo's cancer had spread to his brain.

Strezo's family criticized the insurance company for delaying his drug treatment, which they called a private matter.

"My dad's treatment had nothing to do with some lady in a cubicle (at UniCare) who does not have a license to practice medicine," Polka said, standing beside her mother, Terry Strezo. "The treatment should be between him and his doctor. UniCare decides, based on their financial calculations, who should live and who should not. If you or I made decisions like that, we'd be serving a life sentence on Death Row."

The demonstrators also carried signs showing a photo of Nataline Sarikisyan. The 17-year-old California teen died last month after Cigna, her insurance company, refused to pay for a liver transplant. Cigna later reversed its position, but Sarikisyan was already terminally ill.

"How would you like it if you couldn't call the police because you're not insured?" Flowers asked the crowd. "You pay your taxes, these are services you deserve. You are paying for your insurance. And if they don't want to be in the business of insuring, they should get out of the business."

Flowers is sponsoring House bills for a single-payer medical program and another that would allow patients to appeal denials of their health benefits by insurers.

Officials at Cigna could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

Polka said she hoped the rally would help publicize the struggle that many patients have with their insurance companies in getting the medical coverage they deserve.

"This is something that affects everybody," she said. "Everybody thinks they can sleep at night because they have insurance, but if you get sick it doesn't matter."