CNA/NNOC Speaking Loud and Out! says insurer CIGNA has 'blood on their hands'
henry duke
California nurses group says insurer CIGNA has 'blood on their hands'
This is so sad. CNA and the NNOC have it documented and they are truly laudable as consistent advocates for their patients and their own working conditions which affect them and us.
Healthcare providers – especially Doctors and Nurses – need to be aware of the potentials and awfulness out there in the current socialized world of anarchic medicine.
We have leaders in PNHP (Physicians for a National Healthcare Plan) who articulate the position that a single payer health insurance program aka a comprehensive and universal government health insurance program will have the right or duty to refuse to pay for a non-indicated 3rd round of chemotherapy on, say, a child, that is suffering and near death from leukemia.
That does not appear to be the case here, but the risks/benefits of certain procedures, therapies, and even screening or clinical diagnostic tools can be difficult and ethically tricky, especially if Big Brother in the name of the private insurance program or big brother in the case of the government Utilization Management, who reports to a greater publicly accountable entity, dangles the threat of non-payment or bankruptcy into the difficult bedside relationships of figuring out plans in settings of extreme suffering, and life and death, where those plans all have tinges of grey and are not black and white.
Personally for a more humane policy, I would favor more liberal trust of those at the bedside or charged with the care. As so-called issues evolve such as “futility” or “experimentation with possibility or liklihood of harm” an as-local-as-possible ethics committee should be summoned ASAP,representing the panalopy of stakeholders: mainly consumers/patients, doctors, and nurses. There would be a taint of unsavoryness were such a committee to have representative or stakeholders whose “position” was representing the taxpayers.
Thanks to the CNA/NNOC again for their advocacy as it will give life to the spirit of this young womyn who has not died in vain.
For each according to need,
Henry Duke, MD
Member, PNHP and American Academy of Family Practice
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee statement about the death of Nataline Sarkisyan
(Photo, 17 year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, who died due to the denial of
treatment by her insurance company, CIGNA.)
California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee
statement about the death of Nataline Sarkisyan:
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee
today blasted insurance giant CIGNA for failing to approve a liver transplant
one week earlier for 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, who tragically died last
night just hours after CIGNA relented and agreed to the procedure following a
massive national outcry.
On Dec. 11, four leading physicians, including the surgical director of the
Pediatric Liver Transplant Program at UCLA, wrote to CIGNA urging the company
to reverse its denial. The physicians said that Nataline “currently meets
criteria to be listed as Status 1A” for a transplant. They also
challenged CIGNA’s denial which the company said occurred because their
benefit plan “does not cover experimental, investigational and unproven
services,” to which the doctors replied, “Nataline’s case is
in fact none of the above.”
“So what happened between December 11, when CIGNA denied the transplant,
and December 20 when they approved? A huge outpouring of protest and
CIGNA’s public humiliation. Why didn’t they just listen to the
medical professionals at the bedside in the first place?” asked Geri
Jenkins, RN, a member of the CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents who works in a
transplant unit at the University of California San Diego Medical Center.
"On Thursday, CIGNA was bombarded with phone calls to its offices across
the country while a rally sponsored by CNA/NNOC, with the substantial help of
the local Armenian community, drew 150 people to the Glendale offices of CIGNA – all of
which produced the turnaround by CIGNA to finally reverse its prior denial of
care."
CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro called the final outcome "a
horrific tragedy that demonstrates what is so fundamentally wrong with our
health care system today. Insurance companies have a stranglehold on our
health. Their first priority is to make profits for their shareholders –
and the way they do that is by denying care."
"It is simply not possible to organize major protests every time a
multi-billion corporation like CIGNA denies care that has been recommended by a
physician," DeMoro said. “Having insurance is not the same as
receiving needed care. We need a fundamental change in our healthcare system
that takes control away from the insurance giants and places it where it
belongs – in the hands of the medical professionals, the patients, and
their families."
Also see:
The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States,
and the Struggle to Achieve It
by STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php
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