Ailing US worker gets insurance relief amid shutdown

(Update: Woman says she’s learned insurance to be reinstated)

SALEM, Ore. (AP) – An ailing U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service worker in Oregon who was running out of a treatment to keep her alive and couldn’t reach her employer during the government shutdown says she’s been told her lapsed insurance will be reinstated.

Jasmine Tool says she only has enough of the formula that she gets through a feeding tube to last through Friday.

The 30-year-old says she’d been unable to learn why her federally paid insurance lapsed months ago or how to get it back because the shutdown meant no one was answering her calls.

Tool said Friday that her regional Fish and Wildlife Service office told her that her insurance will be reinstated Monday.

Tool’s situation is unusual. The U.S. government has said employees with active insurance will not experience lapses during the shutdown.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon pointed to Tool’s plight to call for an end to the four-week-long shutdown.

Tool has a brain tumor and a paralyzed stomach from a condition called gastroparesis.