They dragged it out long enough till she died. They wanted her to die straightup so they didn't have to pay. Sick!

Though money can never replace their loss, it can still give them the condolences that come from stickin' it to the man!

While I understand the outrage against the insurance company since the family pays them to provide coverage and they deny it when its necessary based on questionable grounds, it was ultimately the hospital that denied the surgery because they weren't getting paid. Cigna didn't deny the surgery, they just denied that they would pay for it, why is the family not suing the hospital as well?

it is my opinion that health insurance companies are no different than the eugenics practiced by hitler, and by the US earlier in the last century. Both regarded the less healthy as less productive, and deemed them unfit to live or reproduce. Forced sterilizations was going on left and right.

Today, health insurance companies insure only the fittest. Pre-existing condition? Forget it. Even simple allergies can disqualify you (it did me, once). You can't have the same problem on the same joint twice in your lifetime, or yu don't get covered. There are so many things health insurance doesn't cover, it barely makes sense to have it.

They just want our money, and don't want to give us more than the basic antibiotic for the flu. So what happens? The healthy continue to live. The unhealthy, die early due to health insurance's refusal of coverage.

By only insuring the most healthy, and denying insurance to anyone with a minor problem, health insurance companies basically weed out the best, and discard the rest. So the healthy continue to prosper. I see this quite similar to eugenics.

@TruthAndTheory: Flu is a virus. Absent indications of bacterial complications, the correct treatment is no antibiotic at all.

it is my opinion that health insurance companies are no different than the eugenics practiced by hitler

really? you're gonna bring hitler up lol? reeally?

@TruthAndTheory: They are a business. It is a bad business decision to insure those who are more likely to force a company to pay out money.

You are more than welcome to start an insurance company, and insure the homeless who cant afford medical cair, heavy smokers who are more prone to several life threatening cancers and ailments, alcoholics who will need liver and kidney transplants, people with bad knees (so you can pay for their knee replacement) etc.

Your statement is like saying "the NFL only recruits people good at football and becasue of this practice those like my self, who suck at football, will never have the chance to play pro"

@pine22: Let's pack it up, ladies and gents. Godwin is now invoked, the thread is done.

@pinkpuppet: Darn you, lack of edit button. Needless to say, I was directing this at TruthandTheory.

@JustinePirithous: Do you understand what a lawsuit is? You must have grounds for the suit -- what do you think the basis of the lawsuit against the hospital would be?

The family had a contractual relationship with Cigna, so they're alleging breach of contract and unfair business practices, among other things.

prnts shld hv mrtggd th hs wy t sv thr dghtr whl fghtng th nsrnc cmpny. Nt wt fr thr dghtr t d.

@lwstd: Prnts shld hv kdnppd n sshl lk y nd sld hs rgns t py fr t.

I am very happy to see that they are filing a Law Suit against Cigna for their part in her demise... but also mentioned in this post was the fact that the Hospital failed to stabilize the patient! That doctor failed his part by not following the Oath he took in Medical School...

There is enough blame to go around, but the end result is still the same and she is still dead...

The money gained will not be the important part... but hopefully there is such a high price that they pay it brings about some changes to the Insurance and Medical Industries... much reform is needed to keep the 500,000+ a year from dying in the US alone from medical malpractice...

This is why, and I know this is radical to our conservative friends, that for-profit organizations have no business in the health care industry.

The ultimate cornerstone of the hospital or insurance should be patient care and enough money to cover costs. Once you start sucking out money to the shareholders and other owners you are taking money away from the sick who can die. I do not care what religion you are, how do you justify this?

Why should a for-profit private insurance company willingly accept a money losing customer that has a pre-exisiting condition? That makes no sense at all.

@speedwell:

Even better for the insurance company, then!

god i hope they win. even though i'm sure they won't. :(

@AlphaWolf:

When your religion is Capitalism (big C, like Communism), you don't need to justify it.

@AlphaWolf: Money is always going to be a factor. Say the end result does become only to cover costs. What happens when premiums aren't enough (and they won't be)? Benefits get reduced, premiums are raised, etc. In that situation, if you continue to rely only on premiums, you create a situation where insurance becomes more expensive and harder to get, and if you do manage to get some, it won't cover as much. Eventually the situation becomes untenable.

Money will always play a part, it's unavoidable. If we understand that, then we can move on to figuring out how to set up safeguards between financial issues and proper patient care. Already there are some in place targeted at hospitals and care providers(EMTALA, for example, makes it illegal for a hospital to refuse emergency care based on inability to pay). Now, where are the regulations aimed at insurance companies?

I'd like the insurance company to explain why a bone marrow transplant is not experimental but a liver transplant is "experimental".

I'd also like them to explain how/why they had originally approved the liver transplant, then denied it after the delay due to the bone marrow transplant, then stalled, then approved too late. There ought to be punitive damages just for the mental anguish these morons put the family through.

I hope the family has a damn good lawyer.

might have been the right decision. someone else might have been a better candidate for the liver.
there is a shortage of organs after all.
and implanting an organ requires immunosuppressive drugs which is hardly the best thing to have if you are fighting cancer. let alone if you are going to have your bone marrow/immune system is destroyed before getting a transplant of new marrow. the sad truth is she probably wasn't going to make it with all that going on and the parents need someone to blame. assuming unlimited resources is not reality, hard decisions need to be made.

@xtc46: smoking and alcohol abuse both start with a choice to consume those substances. if she was an alcoholic, liver transplant denial would make more sense. if it's congenital or not at all her fault, who are they to say she's not worth it? this is why insurance decisions shouldn't be up to a business. the point of insurance is to pay for (usually) necessary medical care. the point of business is to profit. those two don't mix.

@AlphaWolf:

The problem is that, for-profit or not, hard decisions need to be made. If healthcare is free, people will consume as much of it as possible. Even a nonprofit or government is going to, at some point, have to make a decision to not pay for something that is unlikely to succeed or that only extends someone's life a very short time.

@johnfrombrooklyn: why should they even exist then since that is part of their purpose?

@DrGirlfriend: the other thing is for the most part insurance companies do not pay out in claims more than they receive in premiums otherwise they would cease to function. most patients do not need organ transplants, radical cancer treatments, lifelong dialysis, prolonged hospital/hospice stays etc. most patients pay premiums and have the sniffles once or twice a year, an annual check up, a teeth cleaning and things like that and prescriptions here and there.

insurance is already expensive and hard to get and most people pay much more than they receive in benefit.

Profit for healthcare is blood money keeping an eye on the bottom line.

@Dustin Smith: Do you have a source for that 500,000+ number? That's one in every 5 deaths (2005 data: [www.cdc.gov])

I'd like to see people who complain about health care costs spend 8 years in medical school and learn to treat themselves.

@notbob50: I agree; I used to live in France and the sick-care system I now have to deal with in the US is flatly disgusting.

@starshard0: So expensive schooling for the practitioners justifies bankruptcy-or-death costs for many of the consumers? How enlightening!

@JustinePirithous: "We're not denying treatment, we're just denying payment" is the line insurance companies use to rationalize their behavior. Nice going regurgitating their swill.

I'm sorry, as a medical student, I just have to say that health insurance companies are the bane of our modern society. Don't ever forget that health insurance companies are in business for profit - that is their bottom line, without any other consideration. At least if you're a medical doctor, you have to care about the people you're treating - otherwise, you'd never be able to deal with the endless amount of crap you're put through.

@TruthAndTheory:
I am venting my anger at the fact that we need a universal health insurance where everyone can get the care they need - even if that means higher taxes. Medical costs are so high that the only way Americans can get it, is by having a job that gives them insurance. Lose the job, and you may wind up losing your life, or that of your kid. Once you're no longer "productive" to society, it seems you no longer deserve health insurance, and you risk illness.

While the invention of health insurance wasn't to weed the unhealthy out, that is what's happening. The rich often survive, and the poor more often suffer and die early. It's as shameful now, as it as then.

@JustinePirithous: It's not like there are a lot of kidneys or livers or hearts or lungs or legs or faces available.

@AlphaWolf: Apparantly, as sad as it is, the money is the justification for some hospitals and health insurance companies. So, everyone else can go to hell for all they care.

The insurance companies don't use premiums to pay out claims, they use premiums to play the stock, bond and securities markets (as well as others).
They then use the (supposed) profits from those investments to pay employees, stockholders and when they have to, claims.

There are a HUGE number of regulations governing how much money insurance companies can put to what use and in what markets as well as how much liquidity they must maintain.

Don't EVER believe that an insurance company is going to go broke, (unless they decide to close) they are just like the house in Vegas.
Some People win, most People loose, some People win huge, but the house still gets it's percentage, right off the top.
They set up the rules and the rules say they ALWAYS win.

I hope that they win this and stick Cigna for millions of dollars. Due to some recent things that have happened to me, I have had a chance to learn a lot about how the insurance industry works. If the transplant was supposed to be covered then, they should have paid for it instead of stalling on it.

@JustinePirithous:

Are you kidding me with this? How do you like your job CEO of Cigna?

@FrankReality: It is not a liver transplant that is experimental in this case. It was the use of a liver transplant as a treatment for the condition she had. More than one physician stated for the press that this was an a very risky procedure and, in one case, the chief of a transplant team stated his facility would not have performed the procedure.

Also, CIGNA is not legally allowed to explain to anyone outside of the patients or physicians why they did or did not approve or deny a service. That is the law in the US. If you will note, the family has not provided the child's full medical records to the media themselves. Unless they do that, there is no way that they could comment on it, even if there was not a case pending. HIPAA regulations are very clear on that.

I really have to ask whether giving her a liver would be the best use of it. Admittedly not knowing anything about the case, it sounds as if the chemotherapy drugs burned through her original, and this would be a replacement. Furthermore, at that point, the drugs would have burned through much more than just her liver. My question then becomes: if she's taken enough chemo drugs to burn through a liver, is she responding well enough to the drugs that a new liver will buy her enough time to be cured from cancer and not kill her in the process? Personally, with the few details I know of the case, I would make the decision to first give it to an alcoholic, who would burn through it in 10 years, rather than a debateably terminal cancer patient, who would most likely die in surgery. Sure, it's a tragedy that she couldn't have any hope of survival, but that's the nature of scarcity: people can't always have everything they need, so (in the organ transplant world), scarce items are given to those that need them most.

One other thing to consider, the attorney is Mark Geragos. He is not taking the case because he believes in it or because he thinks he has the merits to win. Based on his past cases, I would say that he is hoping for some press, publicity and, probably, a settlement where he can take a good cut. This is just my opinion, so feel free to ignore it.

@unpolloloco: So who would be deserving? I mean, this was a young lady who had her whole life in front of her and something tragic happened. Normal, young people don't have their liver fail on them - maybe even young people who have chemo. She had cancer, did what any normal person would do - get chemo, and the chemo happened to wreck her liver. You hope for the best when you have cancer and still do your best to live (if that's what you want).

Why is this young lady any less deserving than somebody else who had some other condition? Should it have gone to a 40-year old single man? 25-year old mother of 2?

I find it slightly nauseating the idea of choosing who gets to live and who gets to die - although I do understand that decision does have to be made in some instances. But this girl COULD have gotten that liver - and she had everything in the world to live for.

@JulesNoctambule: Maybe not bankruptcy, but someone, somewhere has got to be footing the bill. Again, if people don't like paying an arm and a leg for medical costs, they could always do it themselves.

All of you who have been voting the small-government, free-market neo-conservative republican politicians into office - this is the fruit of your actions. You reap what you sow people...and we've been sowing selfishly for a long while.

This whole Damn-the-neighbor-as-long-as-I-get-mine attitude is coming back to bite us. The "low taxes" are coming back to haunt us. The falling bridge in MN, the scrumbling schools all across the country...and the miserable state of health care in this, the richest nation in history...wake up before it gets anyworse. In fact, it may already be too late.

Thankfully, we've chosen a new leader, just the kind we need in this time of turmoil. But if we don't wake up and realize that we need to care for one another, that we need to invest in ourselves, our communities, our children and our future...it will only get worse while Indian and China prosper.

you are confusing state health care with unlimited health care. in places with universal health care there are waiting lists and priorities/judgments made to how resources are allocated. it might very well be that in a universal health care system she would have been denied or put on low priority for a liver transplant as well.

@JustinePirithous: what's so fricking experimental about a transplant???? People get transplants all the time.

Questionable behavior+greed+insurance co. douchebaggery=Cigna.

@Justifan: Maybe, but that's not a decision the insurance company makes. That's a decision transplant coordinators make.

@Justifan: That very well may have been the case. But, if it had been, the decision would have been made based on need/priority/medical judgment, as you say. NOT based on a company's bottom line. If she needed it, and it would save her life, she would get it. Besides that whole thing about waiting lists are vastly overstated by those who push for our profit based system. When digging a little deeper, one finds it's nothing more than a BS scare tactic.

@TruthAndTheory: I live in the horrid state of MA, where our idea of "universal health care" is to require everyone to pay for it out of pocket. It totally sucks, as I am self-employed and can't afford it.