Retired SF Firefighter Denied Cancer Treatment, Causing City to Question Blue Shield Health Plan

The family and friends of retired firefighter Ken Jones implored the city’s Health Service Board this week to persuade Blue Shield to reverse the denial of Jones’s crucial cancer treatment coverage through his city-run health plan, and many others have also been denied.

As Mission Local reports, Ken Jones and other retired firefighters gathered with their families at City Hall this week asking the city’s health board to intervene over Blue Shield’s denial of coverage for numerous members. Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who’s an appointee on the board, said the city switched from United Health Care last year with the impression it would provide better options.

“Today I’m forced to stand here and beg because an insurance company decided that profits matter more than the life of a man who spent his career protecting this city,” said Jones’s daughter Rachel Jones at the hearing.

“He ran into burning buildings, inhaled toxic smoke, and put his life on the line again and again, so that others could survive,” Rachel Jones continued.  “Now, when he needs the help the most, the insurance company provided by this city through Blue Shield is denying him the medication his doctors say is necessary to keep him alive.”

Per KGO, Dorsey said the board will investigate the firefighters’ claims. “I don’t think that’s what this board signed up for when we made the decision on the basis of the RFP process,” said Dorsey, per KGO. “I lost my own mother to lung cancer, and she raised a son who was going to fight, to make sure that people get this care that they’re entitled to.”

As NBC Bay Area reports, a fundraiser was set up to cover the treatment that was previously denied for Jones’s stage 4 metastatic lung cancer, which was paused on Wednesday when he was informed Blue Shield had refused to pay. The campaign reached its $50,000 goal over the weekend.

“Firefighters, whether active or retired, should never have to beg for their lives,” said former Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson at the board hearing, who’s also a cancer survivor, per NBC Bay Area. “This is not the first firefighter this has happened to, nor will it be the last if something doesn’t change.”

Per Mission Local, California labor law dictates that cancer diagnoses for firefighters be automatically presumed as tied to their job duties.

As the Chronicle reported last month, the San Francisco Fire Department just became one of the first in the country to make the move toward equipping its staff with gear that’s free of cancer-causing “forever chemicals,” which leach into the body over time — on top of the toxic chemicals firefighters encounter during active fires.

“Our firefighters give this city their best, and we owe them nothing less in return,” Mayor Daniel Lurie said at a press conference last month celebrating the move. Per the Chronicle, over 400 SF firefighters have died from cancer since 2006, according to the San Francisco Firefighters Cancer Prevention Foundation.

This isn’t the first time the SF Health Service Board has had to step in over Blue Shield’s policies in the short time the company has been the city’s provider. In June, Supervisor Dorsey and SF City Attorney David Chiu prompted the insurer to resolve a dispute with the University of California Health system that threatened access to care for thousands of members, including city and state workers, and an agreement was reached in July.

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