Family wants charges against insurer that delayed transplant

Anyone who's followed the story of the 17-year-old leukemia patient in California whose life-saving liver transplant was denied by CIGNA has now learned of the sad result of CIGNA's refusal to approve the transplant in time.

Following the death of the teen, her family and their attorney want criminal charges against CIGNA. I agree wholeheartedly that criminal charges should be filed - and I think they should go for the maximum.

Unfortunately, America has seen such an agonizing drift towards chaos and corporate depravity in recent years that there's no guarantee there will be any prosecutorial action at all against CIGNA. Big Business's lawlessness has in effect been normalized. When the government was dismantled in the '90s, the scales tipped away from the consumer and towards Corporate America, ushering in an era of corporate-centered thinking that's continued ever since.

While I support criminal charges against CIGNA and similarly irresponsible corporations, my view has unfortunately come to be considered taboo. This populist stance is one of many that's become banished and shouted down to the point where the punditocracy refuses to even regard it as a real perspective. Now this taboo is finally being challenged by the requests to prosecute CIGNA for negligent homicide.

The family's lawyer - who is referring the case to prosecutors for criminal charges - says CIGNA only approved the liver transplant when it did because they knew that by that time it was too late, and the patient would die before the transplant could be performed, thus CIGNA wouldn't have to pay for it. The attorney said whoever at CIGNA who made the decision to initially refuse to approve the transplant is "some piece of garbage." All of the doctors agreed the teenager needed the transplant, but the insurer declined it.

If corporations want rights like people have, they should be subject to criminal charges like people are. If a corporation is just a group of people, then maybe the people who make up the corporation's board should be imprisoned when they do wrong.

(Source: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4043101&page=1)