Friday, January 7, 2011

When Insurers Put Profits Before People (Death Panels are a reasonable fear. Just not in the context Sarah Palin would have us believe.)

When Insurers Put Profits Before People - NYTimes.com:
But even when the perfect liver became available a few days after she was put on the list, doctors could not operate. What made Nataline different from most transplant patients, and what eventually brought her case to the attention of much of the country, was that her survival did not depend on the availability of an organ or her clinicians or even the quality of care she received. It rested on her health insurance company.

Cigna had denied the initial request to cover the costs of the liver transplant. And the insurer persisted in its refusal, claiming that the treatment was “experimental” and unproven, and despite numerous pleas from Nataline’s physicians to the contrary.
In all the hoopla over a "Government Takeover of Health Care! Socialism! Death Panels!" the measured response that we do, in fact, have Death Panels already got buried in the blizzard of propaganda and nonsense paid for by the companies that run the actual Death Panels currently in operation. The tragic irony is, if you don't want a for-profit health insurance company making life and death decisions about health care, you do, in fact, want government step in and reform the system. You may be just a little bit socialist! *Gasp!*
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