A 17-year old died just hours after her health insurance company reversed its decision not to pay for a liver transplant that doctors said the girl needed.
Nataline Sarkisyan died Thursday night. 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.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Teen_dies_...
These people had insurance and she still couldn't get a life saving operation. BTW, Liver Transplants are not experimental. My dad had one 15 years ago. Tara, Edwards would take great exception to your idea that only Kucinich has a plan. Edwards has for most of his legal life been providing legal assistance to the insured to get all the law allows and mandates for their families.
As for health care reform. I do not like bean counters making decisions on who gets healthcare and who doesn't. Physicians alone should make these decisions. Insuring companies then should ante up or the government should bar them from selling policies and collecting payments for health coverage. We need insurance and goverment reform not healthcare reform. Yes, definitely.
We need a single-payer, non-profit system. No more insurance companies deciding on your medical care.
Kucinich is the only candidate who has a plan for this. The others don't and the insurance companies pay them - so of course the medical system will not change. We need reform, but NONE of what I've seen offered up will even begin to resolve the problems which are actually:
governmental interference (drives up costs dramatically)
domination of health care by a handful of excessively powerful insurers who get MASSIVE breaks and protections afforded to no one else. (Read Jamie Cort's book HMOs: Making a Killing; read Linda Peeno, MD's testimony; read Cassandra Nathan's book Save America, Save the World.)
And people who FALSELY claim that "universal health care" or "socialized medicine" would have prevented this are very much misinformed. ALL government run care we have now (IHS, VA, SCHIP, Medicare, and Medicaid) is RATIONED care. Let's look at a more up-front state for an example:
http://archive.salon.com/health/feature/...
Under Oregon's unique Medicaid system, which openly rations healthcare in order to provide basic care to as broad a population as possible, Brandy was eligible for a liver transplant or a lung transplant, but not both. In January, and again after a review in May, the state-run health plan said no. There wasn't enough data to show the $250,000 procedure was worthwhile, the health plan's administrators said, and the plan didn't cover experiments.
But Brandy wouldn't take no for an answer. A tough, determined young woman who had managed to work part-time at a photo studio, baby-sit her boss's children, coach the high school football team and maintain a 3.2 grade point average between numerous and prolonged bouts in the hospital, Brandy wasn't about to give up her life without a fight. She sued the state of Oregon, charging that it was making a flawed moral choice in refusing to save her life. Since then her caustic, articulate criticisms of the Oregon system have given a vivid sense of the obstacles any universal healthcare plan for the nation would face.
"They'll pay for an alcoholic to get a liver transplant because they've been drinking all their life," she says, sitting with her mother at a rickety picnic table under a cherry tree by her front door. "They'll pay for a heroin addict to get cured, to help someone kick the cigarette habit. Those are things people do to themselves. If you put it to a vote the people would say pay for some girl's operation instead of some alcoholic's liver transplant or some crack head's needles. I just think it isn't very fair."
That should make a few things clear. Since 2000, some things have changed, BUT let's get real: the care MUST be rationed and the ordering of lists will vary at times, but the system does NOT work.
Also in other countries, they ration and they are ALL going broke.
The free market works:
LASIK dropped like a rock in prices
A "tummy tuck" is less than an appendectomy (apples to apples--a tummy tuck is not paid for by insurance normally, compare that under $10K to an uninsured person's appendectomy--and I won't even have the patient have peritonitis or complications)
http://www.simplecare.com/
walk-in medical treatment for under $100 at Wal-Mart, CVS, and more now
In other words, all over the spectrum of need--from minor to major. Free market would address this AND so would affordable catastrophic care coverage for ALL.
See plan in PDF here:
http://www.booklocker.com/books/3068.htm...
Explains basics including how to fund it.
Unquestionably too many see health matters as a place to take advantage of people:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnfl... |
