Insurance company shamed into not being a gigantic sack of assholes
Single payer now.
Raw Story | Teen dies after insurance nixes transplant funds
Nataline Sarkisyan died Thursday night at about 6 p.m. at University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center. She had been in a vegetative state for weeks, said her mother, Hilda.
"She passed away, and the insurance (company) is responsible for this," she said.
Nataline had been battling leukemia and received a bone marrow transplant from her brother. She developed a complication, however, that caused her liver to fail.
Doctors at UCLA determined she needed a transplant and sent a letter to CIGNA Healthcare on Dec. 11. The Philadelphia-based health insurance company denied payment for the transplant.
On Thursday, about 150 teenagers and nurses protested outside CIGNA's office in Glendale. As the protesters rallied, the company reversed its decision and said it would approve the transplant.
Comments
I kinda understand why the health insurance company orginally said "no." With a very high chance of the girl not surviving it makes some sense. Do I agree that changing their descision could have been faster, and may have lead to the girl living for a couple more months(going off a UCLA doctor's prognosis). Sueing the health insurance carrierer isn't going to bring back their daughter, the only thing it is really going to accomplish is them being even more stingy about their policies, and the raising of health care rates for other people under CIGNA health care.
Posted by: exsulis | December 21, 2007 08:09 PM
@ esxulis: The entire argument for having private, commercial insurance companies is that socialized medicine leads to rationing of care, which indeed it does do. But the trade-off for not providing affordable health-care to a LOT of people is supposedly 1) Choice in providers for those who can afford insurance, and 2) No second-guessing of medical professionals by bean-counters for those who can afford insurance. Of course, what you really end up with much of the time is constant second-guessing of doctors' calls for expensive procedures, as well as increased narrowing of choice of provider.
Insurance carriers can't have it both ways. They can't argue against a single-payer, government-managed scheme while their actions negate their own arguments.
-A-
Posted by: Alan | December 21, 2007 10:14 PM
Gigantic sacks of assholes need a message from sendahole.com.
Posted by: Fred | December 22, 2007 08:57 AM
A: health care in the US is a business first, and foremost that provides a service so when they put limits on said service its to 1) make money 2) provide said service. This is case of what they wouldn't normally cover, changing that and then spent too much time dilly-dallying around.
Socialized health-care from a government puts even stricter limits on what they are willing to cover compared to the average US health-care system. But compared to how much we spend on health-care to other modern nations the amount we pay is pretty nuts. A good portion of the fees we have to pay is directly due to the extreme number of lawsuits that we have hitting healthcare-providers, and doctors.
I'm not saying they shouldn't ever have a lawsuit thrown against them but there are too many like this where said girl wasn't likely to survive said surgery, or even a year if she did survive the surgery. My point I was trying to make is that this lawsuit isn't going to hurt the healthcare provider its going to hurt the other people who get healthcare from this provider, and maybe a few others as they shore up this section in their policies.
Posted by: Exsulis | December 23, 2007 10:49 PM