Woman Links Complaining to Clinton, Firing

Meeting President Clinton was the most exciting day of Catherine Rosen’s life. And now, she says, she is paying a price.

Rosen says she was fired from her bookkeeping job Tuesday, a day after she discussed her health and insurance problems with Clinton.

“They found out I had a problem and fired me,” she said Friday. Lorrie McHugh, an Administration spokeswoman on health care matters, said the White House was investigating.

Clinton called Rosen on Friday evening and “expressed his concern and sent his best wishes and said he hopes all would be well,” McHugh said.

Rosen’s former employer, Peter Sharp & Co., said in a statement it had no knowledge of her medical condition or the substance of her meeting with Clinton when it decided to let her go. The Manhattan real estate company said she was fired for unspecified “valid business reasons.”

Rosen had written to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in support of the President’s health care reform efforts. She was one of three women invited to meet with Clinton after he gave a health care speech in Manhattan.

Rosen told the President that she had discovered a “potentially life-threatening” breast lump two months ago. The doctor advised that she needed surgery to determine whether it was cancerous, she said, but she could not afford it.

She had lost her health insurance when she changed jobs, and the real estate company’s health policy required her to wait 11 months for coverage of a pre-existing condition.

Rosen said the day after she met Clinton, fellow workers chatted up the new celebrity in their midst. But none of the bosses asked her what it was like to meet the President.

At 4 p.m., one of the bosses said she should stop in his office before she left for the day. At 5 p.m., she said, she was fired.

The boss told Rosen that she was “not living up to their expectations” after six weeks on the job. It was the first complaint she’d heard about her work, she said.