Anyone who still insists the American health care system is a workers' paradise after reading this story is a lost cause.
In California, a 17-year-old girl with leukemia has been denied a liver transplant by insurance giant CIGNA - even though doctors think the transplant may save her life. CIGNA's excuse is that her insurance plan doesn't cover "experimental, investigational and unproven services."
So they're saying a liver transplant is "experimental", "investigational", or "unproven"? If doctors recommend a treatment to save someone's life, I wouldn't exactly classify the treatment as any of those things. A patient's life is on the line, but CIGNA is trying to get out of paying for her treatment.
Talk about a serious lapse of ethics by CIGNA. In 1978 a prosecutor in Indiana charged Ford Motor with negligent homicide following a Pinto fire that killed 3, because Ford knew how dangerous the car was but sold it anyway. I firmly believe we need to charge corporations with negligent homicide or murder when they knowingly commit unethical actions that cost people their lives.
An equally important point is that there's probably no other country where big insurance companies are allowed to make important medical decisions. In any other country, if a doctor decides you need to be treated now, you don't sit around and wait until it's too late for some money-grubbing insurer to approve it. If I had cancer, I think I'd trust a doctor who has to follow the Hippocratic Oath before I'd trust some greedy insurer.
I don't even want to hear the excuses that apologists for the broken American health system are going to come up with to defend CIGNA or the system in general. There's no way you can possibly put a happy face on something like this.
After initially denying coverage for the teen's liver transplant, CIGNA reversed its decision and decided to cover it - but only after a massive protest by the California Nurses Association (which represents nurses in that state) and others.
(Source: http://cbs2.com/local/nataline.sarkisyan.CIGNA.2.615167.html;
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/20/92943/929/400/424700)
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Insurer nearly denies teen cancer patient life-saving treatment
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She died now because the assholes at cigna waited too long:
ReplyDeletehttp://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local&id=5848163
I hope the family sues cigna (SCHMEGMA!!!!) for everything they're worth and thensome. Cigna should be charged for nothing less than Murder One.
Are the Child Killers who wouldn't fix the health care system happy now?
I think something has been overlooked here. Just because an insurer says it won't pay for an operation doesn't mean the patient can't get it done. The hospital and her doctors still could have put her on the waiting list for a transplant (and maybe they did, it's hard to tell what exactly happened due to shoddy reporting by KABC).
ReplyDeleteIf the hospital said the transplant is off because of the money involved, isn't UCLA Medical Center the one you should be accusing of murder? Unless the great liberal state of California has given insurance companies godlike power, the worst they can do is refuse to pay for something. It's the doctors and hospitals who hold the scalpel.
You are right Rev. Bo Jangles about Schmegma....The doctors were not allowed to perform the surgery until Schmegma gave them the green light.
ReplyDeleteI don't know all the details og this case but often the doctors are under contract to only provide the treatment the insurance company allows.....The insurance industry practically writes all the laws, so there ya go.
I would like to see a law that says every state and federal legislator must have the same type of health care that the person has to suffer. Then I GUARANTEE we will see health care reform in this country TOMORROW.
Did you know America already has government run health care?
ReplyDeleteHealth care is run by the insurance companies, who also run the government.
The next time some neocon cries about how they don't want "government health care", point out that they already have it.
Also if the doctors performed the surgery without insurance approval, the insurance company would SUE THEM. Any doctor would quickly be driven out of business by insurer litigation.
Bottom line is we need health care reform.
This is not a conspiracy by KABC and other non sequitirs. They just reported the facts. If KABC has a liberal bias then I'm really sorry facts have a liberal bias.
P.S. The governor of the great "liberal" state of California is a . . . . . .
ReplyDeleteRepublican.
America needs to take care of its souring obesity rate and addiction to fast food before it can even hope to overhaul health care. A little exercise wouldn't hurt either. Our fat, lazy society is the reason health care is such a lucrative industry.
ReplyDelete