On a blustery afternoon last week when the temperature didn't even reach 50 degrees, Lynne Magulick was the only person at the Carnegie busway stop wearing shorts.

A 63-year-old who goes bare-legged as late in the season as possible, Magulick was outfitted for the latest offensive in her guerrilla campaign to get health care. She carried over her shoulder a purse decorated with casino patches and cradled in her left arm a clipboard -- useful both for taking notes and keeping hospital staff on their toes, she said.

Having dropped health insurance this spring after her monthly premium nearly doubled, Magulick has been hunting down sources of free care, including hospital health fairs and community center screenings. Her bus trip from Carnegie to Oakland was planned so she could get information about a University of Pittsburgh study in which she hopes to receive free tests for her diabetes.

Uninsured residents in Allegheny County are surrounded by a wealth of health care resources. As more people lose coverage, Magulick's case stands out as an unusual example of trying to work the system to get care through the back door.

"I live on the edge here a little bit," said Magulick. "It's tough to wish your life away, but I'm waiting until I'm 65 when at least I can go on Medicare."

Experts on the uninsured applaud her pluck, but say the broader trend is a dangerous one.

"She's fairly unusual in that she makes a point of getting the preventive work done, even though it's not covered," said Geoff Webster, executive director of the Consumer Health Coalition, a Downtown group that helps people find health insurance. "But in terms of her lack of coverage and needing to piece together a back-door solution, that is a very common occurrence.

"There are others who don't have the knowledge or wherewithal or capacity to do this," he said.

Magulick said she learned about the virtue of perseverance when her husband needed long-term care in the mid-1990s. When she visited him in the hospital and then a nursing home, she made a point to carry her clipboard, wear big hats and walk in shoes with noisy heels. That, along with her forceful personality, prevented him from being prematurely discharged, she believes.

After her husband's death in 1997, Magulick continued to receive health insurance through his labor union but soon couldn't afford the monthly payments of nearly $500 to keep the coverage. It was her first brush with being uninsured and she decided she would pay out-of-pocket for one doctor visit per year and supplement that care by attending hospital health fairs.

Test results from a fair at Canonsburg Hospital in 2001 helped confirm that she had developed diabetes. She went back to her husband's union and found she could buy coverage for $380 a month -- still an "out-of-sight" price, she said, but better than the previous figure. Plus, she felt a more acute need for insurance.

That coverage lasted until earlier this year, when the monthly premium jumped to nearly $700.

A poker player on Monday nights, Magulick is the first to say she's not the picture of poverty. She took Social Security early as a widow, which gives her a monthly income of $865. That's not much, but she does have a modest home in Collier, thanks in part to the money she and her husband made from selling a previous home.

She has the means to regularly travel to her sister's house in Myrtle Beach and to take the occasional cruise. But she thinks it would be unreasonable to expect her to liquidate her assets to buy health insurance.

"I don't try and poor-mouth -- I never thought that was fashionable, even though some people think it's so," she said. "But if I have $865 coming in monthly, which is what's supposed to pay my monthly bills, how in the world can you pay $700 for health insurance? Who would do that?"

While Magulick has been savvy in finding free care, she hadn't heard about adultBasic, a state-subsidized health insurance program for people with incomes that are less than 200 percent of the poverty level. For an individual, that's an annual income of less than $17,960.

Slots for the program are full, but people on the waiting list for adultBasic can buy coverage for $200 per month, said Pat Stromberg, a deputy commissioner with the state Department of Insurance.

The program is a good fit for some, but others find that the costs aren't worth the benefit given their circumstances, said Webster of the Consumer Health Coalition.

Magulick takes medicines for her diabetes and high blood pressure and greatly valued the rich benefits in her previous coverage, which included a pharmacy plan. But adultBasic doesn't cover medicine costs.

For now, Magulick is paying out-of-pocket for the less-expensive medicines she takes. For the more expensive pills, she's relying on free samples from her doctor plus a neighbor's unused prescription.

A worst-case scenario for someone like Magulick is that she's hurt in an accident or is suddenly diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, situations that would require significant health services, said Alwyn Cassil, spokeswoman for the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan health policy research group in Washington, D.C. Some state Medicaid programs can help in such a circumstance, but Pennsylvania officials say it's unclear whether Magulick would qualify.

"We all want security, and you can't be 63 years old, not have health insurance and feel very secure," she said.