Oliver Willis

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.

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In his most recent column for the Baltimore Sun, Gregory Kane (who I’ve never read) criticizes me. Of course, following in the footsteps of those in the entrenched media, Kane does not have the actual guts to use my name in his defense of Maryland Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett’s vote against the SCHIP bill:

Democrats — who voted overwhelmingly for the expansion, along with some Republicans — tried to paint themselves as the “party of the children” and Republicans as old meanies who have a bee in their bonnet when it comes to poor kids. One Maryland blogger even targeted Bartlett, calling him “the scourge of Maryland” and accusing him of taking pride in being “the only member of Maryland’s congressional delegation to vote against health care for poor children.”

Is it any wonder renowned Newsday columnist and editor Les Payne has called the blogosphere “the Wild West without any sheriffs”?

I am, of course, the “one Maryland blogger” operating without a sheriff who accurately called Rep. Bartlett the “scourge of Maryland”. And of course, what I said about Roscoe G. Bartlett is the truth. Maryland’s entire congressional delegation - including a Republican - voted for increased funding for SCHIP, which provides medical care for poor children. It’s not my fault that Bartlett decided to vote against Maryland’s children and other poor kids in America. I’m sorry the facts cause Gregory Kane to swoon at the offense to his tender sensibilities to point these things out.

The column goes on to have Kane reprint Roscoe G. Bartlett’s spin - he’s looking out for the folks, don’t you know? Kane buys hook, line, and sinker Bartlett’s nonsense that he has an alternative plan, but the vote on the floor is the bill in question. Bartlett is in the minority, and when his party was in control he somehow neglected to bring up this plan of his. Bartlett had a choice - either he was going to vote for SCHIP or not, and he didn’t. This Wild West blogger called him out for it, and now he and his dance partner at the Baltimore Sun are doing the lambada!

Roscoe Bartlett voted against a health care program for poor children, a program that is popular nationally, and I’m sure even more so in this progressive state. The other members of his congressional delegation voted for it. It isn’t my fault he’s made himself such an outsider, and a columnist for a relatively major newspaper should know better.

(via Free State Politics)

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I kid ye not.

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Still.

Whether because of breakdowns in doctor-patient communication or some other factor, disparities between the treatment of black women and white women with breast cancer exist, according a new study published today.

Researchers at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University found that among women with breast cancer that had spread to lymph nodes, white women were three times as likely to receive adjuvant chemotherapy and almost five times as likely to receive Tamoxifen, a common hormonal drug for breast cancer.

The study examined medical records from 651 women diagnosed with breast cancer at a major university hospital and cancer center in Detroit from 1990 to 1996. Of the women, 242 were white and 388 were black.

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