UPDATE: Join “Cigna Is Sicko” on Facebook
Why would we possibly want that? It’s SOCIALISM!!!!
Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old from Glendale, Calif., died Thursday just a few hours after her insurer, Cigna Health Care, approved a procedure it had previously described as “too experimental” and that dozens of Sarkisyan’s supporters protested at the Cigna’s headquarters.
“Protestors are here, the war is here,” Hilda Sarkisyan, the teen’s mother, told the group hours before her daughter’s death. “We have a war here.”
The Sarkisyan family claims that Cigna first agreed to the liver transplant surgery and had secured a match weeks ago. After the teen, who was battling leukemia, received a bone marrow transplant from her brother, however, she suffered a lung infection, and the insurer backed away from what it felt had become too risky a procedure.
“They’re the ones who caused this. They’re the one that told us to go there, and they would pay for the transplant,” Hilda Sarkisyan said.
Cigna released a statement announcing the company “decided to make an exception in this rare and unusual case and we will provide coverage should she proceed with the requested liver transplant.”
Translation: Our policy remains that a liver transplant is an “experimental procedure,” and we would gladly let a thousand teenage girls lapse into comas and die rather than threaten our bottom line.
Incidentally, Cigna’s profit margin this year is stellar. One thinks that they could have afforded this lousy little life-saving procedure.
But Michael Moore rails against the insurance companies, so clearly our health care system must be fine, because EVERYTHING Michael Moore supports is wrong for America.
When reading about this tragedy earlier this morning on DKos, the thought occurred to me that many of the same people who would cry “SOCIALISM!” at the thought that the medical insurance companies took the life of this girl (considering that a liver was available 6 days ago but the operation wasn’t performed because Cigna wouldn’t pay) and should therefore be regulated, are the same people who wept and tore their hair in front of the hospital where Terry Shiavo was vegetating several years ago.
Removing a feeding tube from a body with a liquefied brain? CRIME AGAINST GOD AND NATURE THAT MAKES BABY JESUS CRY!
Denying a liver transplant to an otherwise functional, articulate 17-year-old? Cost of doing business.
And what if it is “Socialism”? Why is that necessarily a bad thing?
Yeah, I know. Because by tossing a label at it the loud-mouthed radicals who don’t have a legitimate reason to oppose hope you will similarly turn off your brain and believe the boogy man exists.
Ooooh. It’s Socialism. Sounds spooky. Must be bad.
God!
DEAR GOD NOT TEH EVUL SOOCIALISTS MEDICINES!!!!!! ETS UH PLAGUE EVEN WORS THAN TEH TERRISTS! YOU COMMIES NEED TO THINK ABOOT TEH CEOS THAT WILL BE BANKRUPT AFTERWORDS!
No idea how much a liver transplant would cost. But to be fair, interesting to note the nurses and doctors and felt strongly enough about this case to take somewhat unusual action of “actually [singing] a letter urging Cigna to review it’s decision”.
Yet, like Cigna, the doctors/hospital weren’t willing to cover the cost of the operation either.
And all of you think that a universal health care system would have been the magic cure?
Do you have any evidence to support this?
…the doctors/hospital weren’t willing to cover the cost of the operation either.
Neither did I personally pay for the transplant. Am I therefore at fault? No, since I’m not actually supposed to pay for it. The Hospital isn’t actually supposed to pay for it. The Doctors aren’t actually supposed to pay for it. The Family even, in fact, is not actually supposed to pay for it. Cigna (theoretically though rarely in practice I grant you) actually was supposed to pay for it, but since, as stated above, its their company policy not to do what they, as an insurance company, are sort of expected to do, they denied life-saving treatment since it might have cost them a bit of money.
If you want socialism just move to Europe? Oh, wait, forgot .. ya’ll don’t put your money where your mouths are.
By the way, you know what I hate … people who don’t get the insurance plan they need and then complain when the company doesn’t cover it. You can’t
Do you have any evidence to support this?
It’s remarkably tedious to keep siting, for instance, the W.H.O. study that shows basically all the industrialized nations with Universal Care provide generally better health care, whenever questions like these are posed. I think we’ve actually culturally gotten to the point though of shifting the burden of proof on this issue given how much evidence the pro-side can supply and how little the anti-side does.
I pose it to you then Jay: Why would a Govt run Healthcare system have denied her a liver transplant, called it experimental, refused to pay the hospital for performing it after they had declared it medically necessary to save her life? Do you have any proof that anything like this implausable scenario has occurred in any of the countries with universal care?
Yes, Jay, the proof is the in the details. The hospital declared the transplant medically necessary, the insurance company denied it, the girl died.
Ian apparently doesn’t understand that the girl had insurance and that the insurance company decided it was a better decider of the girl’s necessary medical care than the hospital and on-scene doctors who said she would die without the transplant and who proved to be right. Where do you find that kind of information in the fine print of your policy, Ian?
Yes, its all that dead girl and her parents fault for not knowing she was going to get a disease. It’s never the megacorporation’s fault.
Never.
Once again I am forced to wonder whether wingnuts live in the same country as the rest of us. For the vast, VAST majority of Americans, if they are fortunate enought to work at a job that offers health insurance benefits AT ALL, the plan they get is the plan the company offers. If the company wants to get FlyByNite Insurance to cut expenses, the employee doesn’t have a lot of choice, other than to up and quit and hope they can find another job which will have an insurance plan covering what they need, AND which will be willing to hire somebody who actually needs that coverage, AND the insurer is willing to cover that dreaded “pre-existing condition”
Now I am sure over in wingnut-welfare land y’all do just fine with the largesse from La Malkin’s benefactors, but do you think you could spare a shred of understanding for the millions of Americans faced with Hobson’s choice above?
If you want socialism just move to Europe? Oh, wait, forgot .. ya’ll don’t put your money where your mouths are.
It’s simple. Unlike you, we don’t hate America.
By that logic, if you want a theocracy, move to Saudi Arabia.
Ian comes down on the side of wealth, power, and privilege?
Shocking.
Rex, you’re posing the wrong questions and making overly simplistic statements.
The implication by Oliver is that had the United States had universal healthcare coverage, that this girl would have lived. In addition, you’re posing the wrong questions. While a government run healthcare systems wouldn’t have denied the transplant, there is no evidence to suggest that things would have gone swimmingly. And can we please stop pretending that Europe is some kind of healthcare utopia please? If I was a cancer patient, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to get treatment in Europe as the survival rates are far better here than across the ocean. In addition, there are serious issues in Europe and Canada with wait times.
The bottom line is, we don’t know what would have happened if we had a universal healthcare system. So while criticizing the company is valid, using it as a way to push for universal healthcare is pretty lame.
In addition, while is all of the ire directed at the insurance company? If the situation was so dire, why didn’t the hospital perform the surgery as necessary and deal with getting paid afterwards? It’s not like the doctors and hospital needed permission from Cigna to perform the surgery.
I was so furious reading about that today that I wanted to spit.
There are some instances where the idea of insurance makes sense. Health (i.e. life and death) is not one of them. Every dollar that goes to profit is a dollar that could be going to care instead. The whole idea of profit for insurance companies is to deny care. If they have to pay out, they ‘lose the bet’. Therefore, we are paying insurance companies to deny us care!
We have single payer health here - where the government manages the finances and the doctors are private; it’s called Medicare and it works. We have socialized medicine here also - where the gov’t employs the doctors; it’s called the Veterans Administration.
Health is too important to be left to the ‘market’. By law, a corporation is supposed to put the interests of its stockholders (i.e. profits) before any other consideration. If a business or corporation puts people first at the expense of the bottom line - it can be sued for breach of contract!
We’ve tried ‘managed care’. It doesn’t work. Get us out of privatization and into single payer.
No, Jay, the bottom line is, we do know what did happen to the girl in the US “death by spreadsheet” system. So yes, using this as an example why Universal Health care would be a serious boon to this country.
You keep pointing at these petty little things to criticize the health care systems in other countries. Ok, go to those countries and find out how many citizens would trade theirs for ours.
No, Jay, the bottom line is, we do know what did happen to the girl in the US “death by spreadsheet” system.
And I ask - again - why are the doctors and the hospital getting a free pass? The only reason they didn’t do the surgery is because Cigna said they weren’t going to pay for it. It’s not like there was some kind of forcefield that prevented them from doing it. Apparently the bottom line was important to the hospital and the surgeons as well.
Cigna gave a bullshit reasoning for why they denied payment, then they flip flopped - exposing the bullshit. These companies b.s. people and it causes pain and death. Why? Because they value money more than people’s lives.
But we should just trust the magical free market to figure it out when the problem can be solved, but for the fear of boogedy boogedy socialism.
And I ask - again - why are the doctors and the hospital getting a free pass? The only reason they didn’t do the surgery is because Cigna said they weren’t going to pay for it.
You’re absolutely right: the whole system in which health-care companies, hospitals and doctors are motivated by profit rather than the health of the patient, needs to be changed.
Do we have proof that a more civilized health-care system would have saved this particular girl’s life?
No.
Do we have proof that a more civilized health-care system would cure all disease and prevent everyone from dying?
No.
Is it reasonable to demand such proof before we make any changes?
No.
Come back when you’re ready to discuss the issue rationally, Jay.
Jay: “And all of you think that a universal health care system would have been the magic cure?
Do you have any evidence to support this?”
Yeah, every other industrialized nation does it, and every other industrialized nation get better results.
Ian: “If you want socialism just move to Europe? Oh, wait, forgot .. ya’ll don’t put your money where your mouths are.”
Or maybe they want to stay and make the country better.
Asshole.
“By the way, you know what I hate … people who don’t get the insurance plan they need and then complain when the company doesn’t cover it. You can’t”
You fucking ignorant piece of shit.
She had insurance. The insurance company decided that letting her die was good for the bottom line so they killed her. It’s as simple as that.
Fucking asshole.
I hope you get real sick and the insurance won’t cover it. I hope you get to sit in a hospital knowing you are going to die.
Better yet, I hope you family gets sick so you can see them suffer and you will have to live with knowing you support a system that kills.
And to top it off, you fucking sub-human scum probably consider yourself Christians.
If I was a cancer patient, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to get treatment in Europe as the survival rates are far better here than across the ocean.
Jay. You’re a douche bag. You demand “evidence” even in the face of overwhelming worldwide reports and figures that show the US undeniably and woefully behind the rest of the industrialized world in health care. They (meaning every country but us) live longer, live healthier, PAY A LOT LESS for the same care (you’d think that would put a twinkle in your right-wing eyes since that’s all you guys care about), and insure every citizen.
All you’re left to do is stick your head in the sand and nitpick some issue that’s supposedly wrong with those vastly superior systems and act like it’s the ONLY issue worth of measure. Which, of course, you do:
In addition, there are serious issues in Europe and Canada with wait times.
No health care system is going to be perfect, and no one has suggested otherwise - except for the dishonest conservatives using lack of perfection as their ridiculous excuse not to adopt universal health care, even though that is precisely how they DEFEND the inferior and more expensive American system.
That said, the wait times in Canada and Europe are, like everything else you utter, dishonestly overstated compared to the American health care system.
If you want socialism just move to Europe? Oh, wait, forgot .. ya’ll don’t put your money where your mouths are.
Does that mean that if you support the war in Iraq, you must be writing your post from your station as an American soldier fighting for the cause you believe in? No? I didn’t think so.
As for us, we, unlike you, are trying to improve OUR system because it’s broken and needs fixing.
By the way, you know what I hate
You mean OTHER than brown people and the poor?
people who don’t get the insurance plan they need and then complain when the company doesn’t cover it.
This falsely presumes that a) the family wasn’t adequately covered and b) that everyone can afford all the insurance they’d ever want and simply choose not to. Both presumptions come from absurd ignorance and a sociopathic lack of understanding or compassion.
First, the family had insurance. But even those with adequate insurance can have their claims denied. It happens frequently. It is the directive of the company employees to look for any and all reasons to deny a claim. That is a FACT.
Second, insurance costs have spiraled out of control in this country, and are becoming increasingly out of reach for low and middle income families, with premiums costing in the hundreds and even thousands of dollars a month. So not getting all the bells and whistles in coverage is not a matter of choice any more than you can simply decide to live in a $500 million mansion.
Wilbur, I am discussing the issue rationally. Using this case as a platform for universal health care coverage IS NOT RATIONAL.
Jay. You’re a douche bag.
And Megamoze, you’re a cocksucker.
If that’s the game you want to play, I’ll join in.
Go right here to see how the US stacks up against Europe when it comes to cancer survival:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/21/ncancer121.xml
You demand “evidence” even in the face of overwhelming worldwide reports and figures that show the US undeniably and woefully behind the rest of the industrialized world in health care.
Excuse me asshead. I asked for evidence to support the contention that universal health care coverage is the magic elixir that would have prevented this girl’s death. I’m not talking about a comparison between the United States and everybody else.
I’m merely talking about the absurdity of using this case as a springboard for universal health care coverage.
You have Alicia up there touting our ’single payer healthcare’ - Medicare - saying “it works.” Medicare is a fucking disaster and is only going to get worse as the boomers start retiring. She also talks about the VA. I urge anybody that wants to brag about that “socialized medicine” (that’s what she called it) visit a VA hospital and hang around there for a week and then tell me how excited you are about expanding such a system across the United States.
Also, I see that CS got a furlough from the drunk tank and is here spouting his usual brain dead nonsense, acting like a big tough guy from the safety of his Canadian perch behind the keyboard. CS you are such a freaking coward.
In addition, there are serious issues in Europe and Canada with wait times.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but there seemed to be a serious problem with wait times in this case as well.
I do hear and understand the arguments Jay and others make against a universal health care system. I find them trivial and snide. UHC is not a magic bullet, obviously; but it’s way better than the system we have now. Is there a legitimate reason to not even give it a trial period? I mean, besides “the shareholders, won’t somebody please think of the shareholders?”
Health care for profit is a fucking heartless model and I would gladly deal with whatever issues Canada an Europe have to deal with in order to not have to go through what the Sarkisyan family went through. For that matter, I would gladly deal with these issues than have to watch the Sarkisyan family go through this.
Now Jay, imagine what those cancer survival rates would soar to if the US offered universal care to everyone, given that its a fact that survival rates plummet for the uninsured.
So, yes, we can still use this case to springboard for the universal healthcare. It highlights and area of weakness in the “death by spreadsheet” US system: bean counters making medical decisions.
You have Alicia up there touting our ’single payer healthcare’ - Medicare - saying “it works.” Medicare is a fucking disaster and is only going to get worse as the boomers start retiring.
An overwhelming majority of Medicare subscribers versus private insurance purchasers show that Medicare is higher quality, cheaper, and lets them stay healthy and live longer. Was there a particular reason beyond the obvious one that you threw a snit over “providing evidence” and then rattled on about “Medicare is a fucking disaster” without any explanation as to that wildly scientific analysis?
Medicare’s biggest problem isn’t with quality of service; it’s with the potential funding issue, part of which is hindered by the 2003 legislation that allowed money from Medicare to be diverted back to private companies (which, as noted, underperform on most levels to Medicare) and which is unfathomably easy to solve (hint: it involves a lot of multi-millionaires and health care company CEOs throwing tantrums)
Of course, that likely turns back around to the real reason you’re demanding a kneejerk fight over universal health care, once again using the timid play of demanding that everyone else prove an exact, specific set of terms for your own debate, to which you declare yourself “right” because no one told you exactly what you wanted to hear. You’re far from the only person to just be thinking that, ultimately, you just don’t want to risk potentially paying more taxes to increase the chance of people like this girl who had the audacity to not be rich staying alive longer. So just say that instead of wasting all our time demanding arguments from us you know already you plan to just ignore and dismiss.
I am discussing the issue rationally. Using this case as a platform for universal health care coverage IS NOT RATIONAL.
Sure it is. It’s as rational as using a high-profile murder case to argue for increased police funding.
A rational response to that argument might be to say that the one murder is just an aberration, and to adduce statistics showing that the murder rate is quite low, and not increasing.
An IRRational response would be to say “you think increased police funding is the magic cure that would prevent murders from happening?”
Now, which of those responses is analogous to your response on this issue?
Typical right-wing thinking on your part, Jay. No liberal proposal is valid unless it would immediately solve the whole problem, forever. Every conservative proposal is valid even if it doesn’t solve the problem at all, and even makes it worse (e.g. Iraq, Abstinence Only, NCLB, etc. etc. etc.)
Logic- it’s not just for liberals, although if right-wingers tried it they wouldn’t remain right-wingers for long.
Medicare’s biggest problem isn’t with quality of service; it’s with the potential funding issue,
Which is why it is a disaster August. And attempting to lay the blame at the feet of the 2003 legislation is weak. Medicare is a bloated one size fits all system that costs close to $300 billion a year with spending growth increasing 10% every year (and that percentage is going to keep going up) and no end in sight. And that is what it costs to cover approximately 35 million people. One can only imagine the costs of a program that would cover three hundred million.
And I never declared myself “right” so dispense with that nonsense ok? It’s just absurd to take this particular and example and shout, “YOU SEE!!! THIS IS WHY WE NEED UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE!!!”
And Wilbur, the reason why I am critical is because saying, “We need universal health care” is a wonderful thing. Know what? I would like if every person in the United States had medical coverage. Who wouldn’t? The problem is, whose going to pay for it? Nothing in life comes for free. And nobody is going to tell me that a plan that would cover all Americans is not going to have to coincide with some massive tax increases.
And guess what? There isn’t a politician on the Democratic side calling for universal health care coverage that has the guts to come out and say so. I wonder why that is?
In addition, everybody is avoiding like the plague my question about the doctors and hospitals. Those who point to their heavenly European systems seem to forget that the state over there has a lot of control over the hospitals and doctors. In the United States it is not unheard of for a hospital to charge $5000 a day for a room, and $12,000 a day for a room in intensive care. An angioplasty procedure can cost anywhere from $8000 to $45000 depending upon the doctor who performs it. Does anybody who supports universal health care coverage also support limiting what doctors and hospitals can charge?
I’m just tired of people saying, “I support universal health care coverage” and “Look at Europe” along with other simplistic statements as their model for proving their case for universal health care coverage. It’s weak.
As for why the hospital didn’t just go ahead and perform the surgery anyway, I can only speculate, but there are some likely reasons:
1.)Exposure to a multitude of potential lawsuits. Any time the hospital went against the insurance company, they would risk potential malpractice lawsuits should something go wrong. in addition, they would be faced with a flood of patients expecting treatment regardless of the position of their insurer. That, too, could lead to more lawsuits from people demanding said treatment (or suing for the lack thereof).
2.)The potential loss of insurance coverage for the entire hospital. Insurers covering the hospital and its staff might withdraw coverage feeling that such a “rogue” institution would be too great a risk to cover.
I’m sure with some more thought, I could think of other reasons, but you might notice a common factor, they all involve insurance (and litigation).
So what we have is even more weight thrown behind the idea of a universal coverage system. You might remember Bush bemoaning doctors being unable to practice their love on their female patients (a classic) because of the fear of lawsuits and rising malpractice insurance costs. Of course, he was only waving the usual false flag in people’s faces to get them to push “tort reform,” another GOP pet project to protect corporate America, but there again, the specter of the insurance Boogeyman looms over the medical industry.
The five year survival rates for cancer are interesting, but raise questions about why there is such disparity between those figures and nearly all other health related statistics where the U.S. often falls well behind other industrialized nations. I wonder how those stats take into account the nearly 50 million uninsured (or under insured) across the U.S.
Jay, look at who is eligible for medicare. People over 65, the disabled and those with End-Stage Renal Disease. In other words, the sickest, and most likely to become sick.
And despite your claims that the program is bloated, administrative costs for Medicare are far less than those for private insurance companies. Care providers have to allocate more resources filling out private insurance claims because private insurance companies look for reasons to deny coverage, a practice that gets worse every year.
“You have Alicia up there touting our ’single payer healthcare’ - Medicare - saying “it works.” Medicare is a fucking disaster”
Prove it you lying piece of shit.
“And nobody is going to tell me that a plan that would cover all Americans is not going to have to coincide with some massive tax increases.”
The tax increases would be LESS, LESS THAN what the average person pays for Health Insurance.
Universal health care saves lives and saves money.
Medicare is clearly a disaster, thats why the streets are filled with people demanding it be dismantled. What’s that, you say, politicians would be burned at the stake if they tried to dismantle Medicare?
Oh, nevermind.
You guys never seem to remember that bills need to get paid and that’s why you keep steering it towards how Medicare works as opposed to how it is funded. Medicare is on a crash course for financial ruin. The money currently being allocated through payroll deductions will not be enough to sustain it once the baby-boomers really start using the program.
At the same time, you people want to put in place a similar program designed to cover over 250 million people. In 1965, the government projected that in 2000 the annual cost of Medicare would not exceed $2.5 billion.
That’s why when I see John Edwards claiming his universal health care plan will cost only $120 billion per year and laugh.
And you don’t seem to understand that every other industrialized nation has it (except South Africa). That currently the United States pays more for it than anyone, doesn’t cover everyone, and has worse performance than most of the countries that has it. That’s why we laugh at you.
Healthcare costs have risen from 7.2% of US GDP in 1965 to over 16% of GDP today. That increases 9.9% per year to a projection of nearly 20% by 2015.
As of 2005, State and Local governments accounted for 45.5% of health care expenses while private insurance took up 34.9%. 19.4% came out of people’s pockets or from other sources.
Medicare has a far lower administration cost than private insurance. Depending on what numbers you use its 15-33% for private insurance 2-7% for medicare.
You laugh at Edward’s plan, but he isn’t calling for a government funded plan. His plan expands medicare and schip, creates regional pools, reforms some predatory practices and laws and mandates businesses to pick up some of the health care costs for its workers. In other words, he’s not scrapping the for profit system, he’s using it and changing it, maybe, as a transition towards that universal coverage.
Last point, do you think we should end MEDICARE? Without it senior citizens and the disabled would be unable qualify for or unable to afford private insurance. Apparently you think we should let them die.
What is the typical republican plan anyway? Health savings accounts? In other words, taking tax money away from the government and using it to buy expensive private insurance.
“You guys never seem to remember that bills need to get paid…”
Fuck you, Jay. Don’t tell me what I do and do not remember. I am much smarter than you, and I have proven it time and time again.
Universal health care saves money. It saves money and it saves lives. You don’t like it because it goes against your political philosophy.
Every real piece of evidence shows that universal health care saves money. Every single one. But to you and your conservative morons, reality doesn’t matter.
“That’s why when I see John Edwards claiming his universal health care plan will cost only $120 billion per year and laugh.”
You laugh because you are a retard.
It’s as simple as that.