Our Health Insurance System Kills Another American

WESTWOOD -- A Northridge teenager awaiting a liver transplant died Thursday after she was pulled off of life support.

CIGNA Insurance Company initially refused to cover the cost of the transplant for Natalee Sarkisian, saying the surgery was too experimental.

Michael Moore led a valiant, and ultimately successful, attempt to get the decision makers at CIGNA to change their mind and accept the cost of this woman's liver transplant. However, in the end, it was too late.

Once again corporate greed in the health care system demonstrated to all of us that the advertisements about how they "care" about you staying healthy is all smoke and mirrors. The only thing CIGNA and Blue Cross and GEHA and Kaiser Permanente and the rest of these corporate crooks care about is the bottom line - and you get in the way of their bottom line.

Anyone who has seen the documentary "SICKO" is probably already well informed about the health care crisis in America. The United States is the only developed nation in the world that does not have universal government-sponsored health care. The only one. And when attempts are made in this country to change that, to make America a single-payer health care provider, every Reichwing nutcase on earth comes out of the woodwork and complains about how the government has no place in the health care system.

Funny how it works in every other industrialized country but here it wont. I wonder why? Do you think the millions of dollars that the health insurance companies pay into lobbying Congress could have something to do with it? Rather than spending all that money on lobbying and buying votes with campaign contributions, why aren't the health insurance companies funnelling that money into taking care of sick people like this girl who died yesterday?

CIGNA chose to not cover the cost of taking care of this girl because of their concerns for the bottom line. Maybe it would have cost them $100,000 to help save her life. Now that she's gone I hope enough people covered by CIGNA insurance switch to another carrier that it costs them more than $100,000 in incoming insurance premiums.

The Repignofascist Party claims to be the "pro-life" party. Yet it was the Repignofascist Party under Richard Nixon that allowed the shift to managed health care that led to the current mess we're in (don't believe me? Check out Richard Nixon's own words when you watch SICKO). Being "pro-life" means that you care about the sanctity of life for everyone - even sick kids with a liver ailment. Repignofascists forget that little brush with reality each time the CIGNA insurance companies of the world open up their checkbook and write another campaign contribution check.

Wake up, sheeple.