She dragged herself home to Lawnside and into bed.
The next morning, her friend and manager, Cheryl Monaco, "told me to go to the hospital because in the 15 years she's known me, I've never been sick. She said go or she was going to call my mother."
Brockington went to Cooper University Hospital - for 48 days.
Acute myeloid leukemia.
Brockington had been paying $19 a week from her paycheck for health insurance.
For 16 months, insurance covered chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, five months in hospitals.
But on Aug. 28, 2008, a letter came from her plan administrator. Brockington had reached her "lifetime maximum coverage of $2 million."
In five days, she would be uninsured.
"I started freaking out," Brockington recalled. "We started working on my options, what I could do, and there wasn't a whole lot."
More than half of all employer-based insurance plans in America have lifetime caps limiting how much can be spent on any one employee, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey.
Because of rising health-care costs, more Americans appear to be reaching those caps, even though cases are still rare. Insurance companies and employers say by capping lifetime expenses for any one employee, they can afford better benefits to all employees.
"The primary reason for . . . caps is to lower the cost of insurance so employers can cover as many people as possible," said Mary McElrath-Jones, spokeswoman for UnitedHealthcare, parent company of UMR, administrator of Brockington's health plan.
Many find caps to be unfair.
