Shannen Doherty on cancer fight, SAG-AFTRA’s ‘broken’ health system



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Shannen Doherty has been battling stage 4 metastatic cancer since 2019.

She made her diagnosis public in February 2020 and has continued to work on various television and film sets as part of her treatment program.

In addition to leading Lifetime’s annual Stop Breast Cancer for Life campaign, Doherty released two lifetime films, “Dying to Belong” and “List of a Lifetime,” this weekend.

The 50-year-old star told Variety why it was so important for her to continue playing and how difficult it was to keep her SAG-AFTRA health insurance.

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“You have to make your way to other people and let them know you’re hired. Stage 4 cancer doesn’t mean the end of your life,” Doherty said. “It doesn’t mean that you are not viable in the workplace. Quite the contrary.”

The “Charmed” alum pointed out how “harder” cancer makes her work because “we have so much more to prove.”

Shannen Doherty explained why it was so important for her to keep taking action and how difficult it was to keep her SAG-AFTRA health insurance.

Shannen Doherty explained why it was so important for her to keep taking action and how difficult it was to keep her SAG-AFTRA health insurance.
(Weiss Eubanks / NBCUniversal / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

“I always feel like I have to prove I can handle the long hours. So I won’t complain 16 hours a day. I won’t complain about doing 16 takes when we had it at the third take, “she admitted. “I can do it better than anyone – with Step 4. “

Doherty has also been brutally honest about the battle she had with her actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA, for good health coverage.

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“There are a lot of unions where you get your points-based health insurance. And these points are accumulated over the time that you have been in the union. So, I’ve been in the union for 40 years, I “I have been paying the highest premiums for 40 years. And the fact that if I don’t work for a year, my insurance drops to a lower level and the price of it- ci is getting very high, ”she said in reference to taking time off after being diagnosed.

“And then that lower level only lasts, I don’t know, a year or two, maybe. And then what?” she wondered.

Doherty released her diagnosis of stage 4 metastatic cancer in February 2020.

Doherty released her diagnosis of stage 4 metastatic cancer in February 2020.
(LISA O’CONNOR / AFP via Getty Images)

Doherty admitted that she constantly worries about working hard enough to maintain her health. “It’s something that worries me, of course, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I have to make sure I make a certain amount of money every year to get insurance. So if you just looked at my 40 years of paying premiums, and the pension and whatever the producers pay on my behalf, you’d think that would cover my insurance for the rest of my life. And it should, ”she said.

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As of this month, Doherty has been on drug treatment for her cancer. “I take one of them every day, and I will for the rest of my life. The other, I take it until my body stops responding to it. I’m doing just fine – I do my blood tests once a month. I do my PET scan and everything else every six months, “she explained.

She maintains the hope that her “body will remain responsive” to the treatment as she finds the acting and the staging very “fulfilling” in a creative way.

Doherty praised his close circle of family and friends for helping him keep his life normal. “No one in my immediate circle looks at me any differently. None of them treats me any differently. It’s just me,” she said.

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“I think it is important to have a normal life when you are facing something that is not Ordinary.”

Meanwhile, the SAG-AFTRA health plan told Variety in a statement “that health coverage does not depend in any other way on the payment of membership dues, and that the health plan and the union itself. same are different entities “.

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