7 On Your Side: Workers left scrambling after employer terminates health insurance benefits

One of New Jersey's largest nursing home providers left it's own employees scrambling after suddenly terminating their healthcare benefits.

One of those loyal employees is battling cancer and said she had no way to pay for costly treatments that could save her life.

"This is my baby, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves," Kathy, Erika's mother, said.

Fighting for her daughters life, a mother's anguish is directed at her daughter's employer. A nursing home giant which suddenly terminated employees' health insurance.

"(I'm) very stressed out. I'm experiencing more pain than I ever have. I cry a lot," Erica Legion said.

That's because she was diagnosed in late June with multiple myeloma and then found out that she had no health insurance the next week.

With no coverage Erika's doctors advised her to delay expensive infusions, one of them writing that "it will be outrageous and we don't want you going into massive debt for this."

The cost of one chemotherapy session is a whopping $37,248.

Legion sent several emails to her company, pleading with them to restore her health benefits, but she was ultimately unable to pay and had to cancel her chemotherapy.

The company cut her benefits, despite the fact that health insurance costs were deducted from her paycheck every week.

Legion is the Director of Housekeeping at Cornell Hall, one of eight facilities throughout New Jersey run by Windsor Healthcare where she was named employee of the month doing a job she loves throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

"These people are there because they don't have families. They don't have support, we're like their family," Legion said.

Legion said employees were only told in a town hall meeting in early July that their health care insurance had been canceled a week before.

So, 7 On Your Side tracked down Windsor's senior vice president who was out of the country.

Days later, the company told employees they had coverage once again and retroactive to July 1.

Windsor Healthcare paid for all three of Legion's chemo infusions so far, totaling $111,744.

Now to the relief of her family she's on the road to a full recovery.

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