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Cigna denies claims until 17 year old dies.
Submitted by Dan U-A on Sat, 12/22/2007 - 3:00pm.
Cigna, headquartered in Philly, made some great headlines this week.
A girl named Nataline Sarkisyan, with insurance from Cinga, was recovering from Leukemia, got a bone marrow transplant, and needed a liver transplant. Her doctors said the transplant would save her life, and that it was literally her only chance of survival.
Cigna responded by calling the transplant experimental, and denied her claims.
Her family fought, they went to the media, they staged protests with doctors and nurses at their sides, and eventually, Cigna relented, and approved the transplant.
However, the delay was long enough that later that night, Nataline passed away. The delay literally killed her.
Check out this video:
Cigna... one of Philadelphia's finest corporate citizens.
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Let's hear it for the US health care 'system'
Things like this are absolutely inevitable given a profit-driven health care system. Remember: whenever profit is the motivating force, anything good which comes out of that endeavor is a side-effect. Meaning, in a profit-driven health care system, healthy people are a side effect. The entire goal of a profit-driven health care system is profit; meaning that, if people die but the companies make money, that's just fine.
Pathetic. That's the price we pay for living in a heavily-armed 3rd world country.
-Z
It's Time to Get Outraged
We need to stand up against this kind of crap. A libertarian respect for the rights of business owners is fine and well, but sometimes morality just has to come first.
I agree with you completely, Zorro. We are turning into a heavily armed third world country.
The Expatriate
No, not turning into one...
This country, arguably, already is a heavily-armed third world country. The transformation began w/the Reagan administration, when the all-out war on the middle class, to the benefit of the upper class, began. The transformation continued, albeit at a slower rate, during the Clinton administrations, and accelerated full-bore w/the selection of Shrub.
Look at the socioeconomic breakdown of the US, specifically the percentages in the highest and lowest economic groupings. The amount of wealth belonging to the former group has increased markedly at precisely the same time as the number of people in the latter group has increased. There is a direct, causal relationship between these two trends. Not coincidentally, this is precisely the socioeconomic breakdown seen in banana republics.
The genius of the New Deal was not, as some on the right claim, that it established socialism in the US. Rather, it saved capitalism from its own excesses. Left to itself, a capitalist system will result in a socioeconomic breakdown where a small number of super rich dominate a much larger number of poor. This is not mere Marxist rhetoric; it is a reading of the historical record. It's worth noting that Marx thought that Proletarian Revlolutions would occur, not in backwards nations like China + Russia, but in his native Germany, Britain, or the United States. The three things which prevented Marx from being correct were, in no particular order, universal public education, the redestributive income tax, + the rise of labor unions. Meanwhile, the GOP has gone out of its way to decimate precisely these three things; clearly, the GOP is dominated by orthodox Marxists who wish to foment the proletarian revolution.
Well, I don't want to see a proletarian revolution. History has also demonstrated that the dictatorship of the proletariat which follows the proletarian revolution will not spontaneously wither away, as it would be entirely contrary to human nature for a dictatorial regime to voluntarily disband itself. So, if we want to preserve capitalism, we need to save it from itself. Part of this has to be the removal of the profit motive from the provision of health care.
-Z