Cigna faces lawsuit in death after policy fight

We have the most pathetic non-health care system in the world run by a bunch of blood sucking private insurance companies that carefully select the actuarial pool. They are interested in insuring those least likely to need medical care and rejecting care for people like Nataline. The people that survive illness are refused insurance and eventually taxpayers pick up the tab for their medical care. A wonderful racket for the insurance companies, dump their risks on the government allowing them to pocket all those low risk profits. Nataline’s life mean’t nothing to Cigna, their real concern is to waste money on employer plan administrators, association managers, insurance claim adjusters, paying billions in sales commissions, expensive ad campaigns, executive bonuses, stockholder dividends, corporate acquisitions, luxurious office buildings and year-round political contributions -- all from your monthly premiums. How many more people must die till the public says enough and demands real change?

Fed-Up wrote:

We have the most pathetic non-health care system in the world run by a bunch of blood sucking private insurance companies that carefully select the actuarial pool. They are interested in insuring those least likely to need medical care and rejecting care for people like Nataline. The people that survive illness are refused insurance and eventually taxpayers pick up the tab for their medical care. A wonderful racket for the insurance companies, dump their risks on the government allowing them to pocket all those low risk profits. Nataline’s life mean’t nothing to Cigna, their real concern is to waste money on employer plan administrators, association managers, insurance claim adjusters, paying billions in sales commissions, expensive ad campaigns, executive bonuses, stockholder dividends, corporate acquisitions, luxurious office buildings and year-round political contributions -- all from your monthly premiums. How many more people must die till the public says enough and demands real change?

Fed up just about says it all. If you want to know what a real feeling of powerlessness is, just try dealing with an insurance company regarding benefits. You might just as well be dealing with a rock. Come to think about it, a rock has more empathy than these people.

Did anyone tell the Doctors, Nurses, hospital administrators, or hospital that they couldn't perform the procedure? Not that I'm aware of. Yes they are a business and couldn't "afford" to do it. Well Cigna is a business too. My question is "How could the Doctor's let her die?". Can someone answer that?

Bob is probably a Cigna employee...

Cigna is a messed up Ins CO. They like to deny any types of coverage they provide their "customers". Just google Cigna lawsuits and you will see what I mean, Check out the bad faith items. You pay for their coverage, and they fight you tooth and nail to provide and payments if God forbid you need it!!!

She was in a vegetative state for some time, her mother, Hilda, said.
Does that sound to you like the poor girl was going to have ANY kind of life? Even if she had the transplant....I doubt she'd have improved enough to enjoy the approximately 6 months she may or may not have gained.
I'm not saying insurance companies should be able to make the decisions...but they have no idea how much pain and suffering this girl would have had to endure either.
The loss is immeeasurable....sounds like the parents/lawyers will find a $$ amount to put on her life!
One side is no better than the other...and a bit
of thinking on both parts may just have them realizing they need to remember the good years they had, and not how her life ended....vegetative and in pain.

There is no reason that she should been denied. The health care system in this country is becoming the worst in the world and look how much is paid! It isn't the doctors fault that this poor girl died, it's the insurance company. I hope they feel like the slime they are. Shame on you Cigna! I hope you feel good about yourselves and good luck defending your actions in court.

Before they delayed she was not in a vegative state and had something like a 65% chance of recovery. They purposely delayed the treatment until it was too late.

Cigna has lost it's standing when it reversed it's ruling and was prepared to pay after the negative publicity due to the nurse's pickets. I cannot see how they can defend themselves. They would have had grounds if they would have stayed with their original decision. This is why we need to have single payer, government health care (like Medicare-for-all) and wipe these vampire insuurance companies off the face of the earth.

welcome to america,theese united states.

God forbid ANYone should be dependent upon Cigna for their health care! Everyone who has another option in their Employee Cafeteria Plan should opt-out of their Cigna plan if they have it and select a different provider. Maybe that will send them the message they're not getting from the folks they're SUPPOSED to be taking care of. Health care is not supposed to be a bottom line cash-cow driven business. It's about PEOPLE not MONEY. What jerks!

Ins companies are not doctors. They don't save lives, the adjusters never went to medical school. DOCTORS on the other hands who work in hospitals such as the one this poor girl was receiving treatment - they are trained and take an oath to save lives. I don't know how many cigna employees who can do liver transplants, but I know there had to be a few doctors at that hospital who could. They should have too, regardless of what Cigna said they would or would not do. And instead of filing a lawsuit after she died, saved her life to begin with, and then dealt with CIGNA. A life is much more important. The finger should not be pointed at an insurance company but rather at the doctors who DID NOT DO THEIR job. They are money hungry, they saw they weren't going to get paid immediatly and just let a life go instead of dealing with that later. Insurance companies have to raise their premiums b/c doctors know the ins company will usually pay whatever they charge as long as its "reasonable and customary" All doctors raise their price, the ins can't deny. I could go on and on - doctors are the ones who need to take a look in the mirror and decide what a life is really worth - can you really put a price tag on it? Then make their decision based off that - not Cigna.

Look at these comments about
Cigna from ripoffreport.com :
http://ripoffreport.com/searchresults.asp...

That's so sad. We're all going to die eventually anyway; are the insurance companies going to deny us coverage because of that?! Utterly ridiculous that one has to literally pay to be alive in this country, the "greatest" on the planet. Cuba has better health care. I wish I were joking. My best wishes go out to the family, and everyone else who's had to deal with such greed.

discusting. Corporate America is the new mobs of the 50s they robbed their $ as well as their child and it isn't the first time

The case history requires examination. The complex facts make the case cloudy to offer a fair opinion. The denial of a liver transplavt does not appear to be a clear-cut evil, as the headlines make it out to be.

One deep, very deep question to ask is this: Is it wrong to admit that a natural life using self-preserving energy, has terminated?

There is a point when Death cannot be denied or resisted.

There are open and general thoughts.

Nah, there's no health care crisis...

and in another cost-saving measure, if the likes of Cigna keep gettin' their way, it won't be long before lobbyists arrange for you to get an Internet degree to qualify you to operate on yourself.

The corrupt politicians keep the current system. They created laws that allow the insurance companies to steal blind from sick and dying.

One way to split the difference and get the "profit motive" concern out of the picture would be to socialize just this aspect of the insurance / health care system. So, we pass legislation that gives patients the right to petition for independent third party review when their life is at stake.
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We make it so a small body of randomly selected licensed doctors practicing in the state makes the decision on a case by case basis. It would sort of be like jury duty for doctors. Then no one can say "Cigna denied this claim". Rather, a panel of real experts would make the decision. There'd probably have to be additional language in the legislation to protect the doctors from retribution from insurers, but that should be workable (something like "insurers may not keep records of what doctors were involved in any case for review").
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We've got to stop wringing our hands, and start passing some legislation folks. Otherwise, this mess is only going to get worse. All the lobbyists in the world can't stop the will of the people once we decide what we want. That's the whole problem with health care -- we can't seem to decide what we want, and we allow lobbyists and insurers to scare us. The bottom line is that we need to decide what we want and MAKE our congressional representatives implement that plan.
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People seem to forget that corporations are legal entities given the right to exist by the government. If we don't like what corporations are doing, we do have recourse -- we just have to decide what we expect. THAT is what makes this a great nation. The rights of the minority are (usually) protected, and the will of the majority is (usually) done.