Wanda Roberson spent seven months paying out of pocket for her son Tareen's leukemia treatments while his NJ FamilyCare application sat unresolved, a wait she says began after the family's insurance ended when the boy's father retired. The Jersey City single mother says she submitted her application paperwork in November 2025 seeking coverage for Tareen's medication, doctor visits and chemotherapy, only to be told to restart the entire process from scratch.
Roberson's ordeal, first reported by WABC-TV, traces back to 2024, when Tareen was diagnosed with leukemia while still covered under his father's insurance. Once that coverage lapsed with the father's retirement, Roberson said her family relied on temporary Medicaid and charity to keep her son's treatment going. She said finding out her child was sick was devastating, and the months of uncertainty that followed only compounded the strain.
Roberson applied for NJ FamilyCare, the state program that provides affordable health insurance to qualifying New Jersey residents, but the application remained pending for months. She said she had been dealing with the insurance issue for seven months before deciding to reach out to 7 On Your Side, telling the investigative team she had seen them get things done for other families.
An Investigative Team Steps In
According to the station's report, 7 On Your Side contacted the New Jersey Department of Health Services on Roberson's behalf. By the end of the week, Roberson received good news: Tareen's treatment costs were retroactively covered in full.
That full retroactive coverage was possible because of a specific state rule. Under New Jersey Administrative Code § 10:49-2.9, NJ FamilyCare Plan A beneficiaries can have unpaid medical expenses from the three months before their application month covered retroactively. In Hudson County, where Roberson lives, residents can seek welfare and Medicaid application assistance from the Hudson County Board of Social Services, located at 257 Cornelison Avenue in Jersey City.
Why the Wait Stretched So Long
Roberson's seven-month wait was lengthy, underscoring a gap between the standard meant to protect low-income applicants and what actually happened in her case. New Jersey Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services materials described the post-pandemic Medicaid “unwinding” as the single largest redetermination exercise in the history of New Jersey's Medicaid program.
New Jersey's Cover All Kids policy allows children under 19 to enroll in NJ FamilyCare with household income up to 355% of the federal poverty level, or $8,210 a month for a family of four in 2026. By the end of 2022, more than 47,000 previously uninsured children had enrolled, and another 16,000 could get coverage. Cover All Kids is part of NJ FamilyCare, a state program that provides affordable health insurance to qualifying New Jersey residents. According to New Jersey Department of Human Services renewal data, NJ FamilyCare had started the renewal process for 1,998,141 members as of June 30, 2024.
The Cost of a Cancer Diagnosis Without Coverage
The stakes of a lapse like Roberson's are steep. Academic research on pediatric oncology economics published in PMC discusses the costs of pediatric cancer care, with specialized treatments like CAR-T cell therapy running over $500,000 for the drug product alone. For families facing a crisis like Roberson's, programs like NJ FamilyCare can be an important source of coverage. According to a 2021 study published in PubMed Central, survivors of childhood cancer likely experience material hardship linked to socioeconomic factors, including a lack of comprehensive insurance.
Families facing similar delays in the future may not have the same safety net. If retroactive coverage does not extend across the full delay, prolonged application backlogs like the one Roberson experienced could leave future families liable for months of medical bills.
