A 32-year-old woman is suing an upstate New York health system and doctors, alleging that a neurologist refused to provide her treatment because she was of “childbearing age.”
According to the complaint, Tara Rule suffers from cluster headaches, and was seeking treatment from a neurologist at Glens Falls Hospital, which is owned by Albany Med Health Partners.
After her previous doctor retired, she was referred to Dr Jonathan Braiman, and sought treatment from him in September 2022. While at an appointment with Dr Braiman, Ms Rule was told that although there were “safe, effective treatments were available for cluster headaches,” he could not prescribe them due to her insurance not covering care that could cause potential birth defects.
Ms Rule then argued that she already takes medication — Cellcept — for another condition that has the potential to cause birth defects, and her insurance covers that prescription without issue. Dr Braiman then told Ms Rule that she was wrong, and that Cellcept does not wield those side effects. She pressed him to look up the side effects, which he read aloud at the appointment — in a conversation that was recorded.
He then asked the 32-year-old “what she would do in the event of a pregnancy,” the complaint stated. Ms Rule said she would have an abortion.
After some back and forth, Dr Braiman suggested Ms Rule “think deeply” about her use of Cellcept, given the risk of birth defects, and added that she should “bring her (male) partner in on the conversation” about her treatment. However, she countered that her partner had a vasectomy, so the risk of pregnancy was out of the question, the filing states.
Ms Rule then apparently asked the neurologist if it would be safe to prescribe this same treatment for women who have gone through menopause, to which he said: “Yeah, they would be.”
Cutting straight to the point, Ms Rule asked: “So, the only reason you won’t prescribe me these treatments is because I could get pregnant?” But she didn’t get a straight answer. The doctor then asked, “How’s your sleep?”
The filing states that the neurologist denied “safe, effective treatment for her disabling condition due to her age and sex, and that he refused to provide her “treatment options based solely on the potential for pregnancy, despite [Ms Rule] repeatedly telling Dr. Braiman that pregnancy was neither a possibility nor a concern.”
“He said as long as I am of childbearing age, regardless of sexual partner, regardless of birth control method, regardless of any of that, I can’t take the treatment,” Ms Rule said in a tear-filled TikTok video on the date of her appointment.
In an interview with Jezebel, Ms Rule underscored that the pregnancy question gets more complicated in a world after Roe v Wade fell. “Where are we drawing the line here? Are hospitals going to require someone to share a pregnancy test, proof they’re on birth control, get a hysterectomy, to get life-saving health care?” She said she hopes her case can create more protections for those of “childbearing age” in a post-Roe world.
A spokesperson for Albany Medical Health Partners told the outlet that it “cannot comment on pending litigation.”
Under the Affordable Care Act, it is “unlawful” for providers to “refuse to treat an individual – or to otherwise discriminate against the individual based on sex or age as well as to deny or deny treatment on these bases.
But the situation only got worse for Ms Rule.
A week after her appointment with Dr Braiman, she went to the emergency room “ due to the untreated cluster headaches” and her vitals were “dangerously out of range due to the pain of the untreated condition,” the complaint states.
But chaos didn’t stop for Ms Rule. A nurse practitioner, Christine Calistri, then told her that she was being discharged for live streaming, which, she said, was “100% illegal.” Security guards then stood outside of her room as Ms Rule repeatedly denied that she was live streaming, the complaint states.
As a result, Ms Rule was asked to “leave the premises,” despite the fact that she was “still high on the pain scale and records indicate her blood pressure and pulse were still abnormally high”; she was not transferred to a different facility, the complaint added.
But still, the saga continued. After Ms Rule’s partner posted a negative review on Google, Ms Calistri reached out to him, “an unauthorized party to receive Plaintiff’s private health information,” via Facebook, where she “disclosed” Ms Rule’s health information and said that because of the negative review, “her children were receiving threats to their life.”
Ms Rule sent a complaint to the emergency care center about the nurse practitioner, which found “no impermissible HIPAA violations occurred.” She also filed a complaint with the New York State Department of Education, which found Ms Calistri “to be in violation.”
On top of this judgment, hospital records subpoenaed by Ms Rule’s lawyer found that the nurse practitioner wrote that Ms Rule was “feeling better, which was normal” and that she had requested to be discharged. These documents also “noted instructions to escort” Ms Rule off the premises, seemingly contradicting the other paperwork.
On top of the violation of the Affordable Care Act claim, Ms Rule accused the defendants of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Age Discrimination Act of 1975, the New York State Patient Bill of Rights, and federal regulations. She also accused Ms Calistri of violating HIPAA.
In the year since her appointment with Dr Braiman, Ms Rule told Jezebel that she still hasn’t been prescribed the medication she sought to treat her cluster headaches. Ms Rule added that she never intended her experience to amount to a lawsuit, but merely “wanted an apology.”
