Meanwhile, members of the California Nurses’ Association took part in a group protest outside Cigna’s Glendale, Cal. office Thursday. Charles Idelson, a spokesman for the nurses’ group, said "The transplant was recommended by the medical professionals at the bedside. They should have been listened to." And Saturday morning, I just caught the end of a TV news story covering Nataline’s death, the reporter concluding that America’s insurance companies “have too much hold over life and death.”
My family is insured my Cigna. And it’s been one of the most miserable companies I’ve ever dealt with. Cigna's customer service policies are awful; their treatment of clients borders at times on unethical, in my opinion. In other words, I’d love to point the finger at them here, call them murderers and criminals as Nataline’s family lawyer is doing. But I just can’t. I think the whole health care system in this country is broken, and this is just another awful example of that fact. A young girl is dead; the liver transplant her family wanted probably couldn’t have saved her. But why did her insurance company, rather than her doctors, get to make that call? That, to me, is the heart of this tragic story.
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2007: The Breast Cancer Year in Review
