Posted on 12/21/2007 4:46:27 PM PST by Cagey
The family of a California teenager who died awaiting a liver transplant said they would sue the insurer whom they blame for their daughter's death.
Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old from Glendale, Calif., died Thursday just a few hours after her insurer, Cigna HealthCare, approved a procedure it had previously described as "too experimental."
Attorney Mark Geragos said that Cigna "maliciously killed her" and that he hopes to press murder or manslaughter charges against Cigna HealthCare for the death of Sarkisyan.
District Attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons declined to comment on the request for murder or manslaughter charges, saying it would be inappropriate to do so until Geragos submits evidence supporting his request.
"They took my daughter away from me," said Nataline's father, Krikor, who appeared at a news conference with his 21-year-old son, Bedros.
Cigna appears to have reversed its decision to deny the transplant after about 150 teenagers and nurses protested outside its Glendale office Thursday. "Protestors are here, the war is here," Hilda Sarkisyan, the girl's mother, told the group hours before her daughter's death. "We have a war here."
The Sarkisyan family claims that Cigna first agreed to the liver transplant surgery and had secured a match weeks ago. After the teen, who was battling leukemia, received a bone marrow transplant from her brother, however, she suffered a lung infection, and the insurer backed away from what it felt had become too risky a procedure.
"They're the ones who caused this. They're the one that told us to go there, and they would pay for the transplant," Hilda Sarkisyan said.
Geri Jenkins of the California Nurses Association said the Sarkisyans had insurance, and medical providers felt comfortable performing the medical procedure. In that situation, the the insurer should defer to medical experts, she said.
"They have insurance, and there's no reason that the doctors' judgment should be overrided by a bean counter sitting there in an insurance office," Jenkins said.
Doctors at the UCLA Medical Center actually signed a letter urging Cigna to review its decision. Nataline Sarkisyan was sedated into a coma to stabilize her as the family filed appeals in the case.
During the middle of Thursday's protest, Hilda Sarkisyan fielded a call from Cigna alerting her that her daughter's procedure had been given the green light. Cigna released a statement announcing the company "decided to make an exception in this rare and unusual case and we will provide coverage should she proceed with the requested liver transplant."
Baloney.
It's worth noting that there was no financial angle to the Schiavo case in terms of the cost of her care. Her parents were perfectly willing to pay every penny needed to keep her alive.
If the doctors thought it was such a good idea, they could have done it on credit pending the appeals.
Certainly a valid point. But at a cost of $600,000 per operation (that's the number someone posted here for the cost of a friend's liver transplant) it occurs to me that the doctors have a huge financial incentive to do the surgery even if the patient is going to die anyway.
Call me a cynic, but I simply don't trust anyone in cases like this.
You need to spend some time in the insurance business. You would see life much differently. Insurance businesses deal with fraud every day. There is an inherent information asymmetry in the insurance business. Purchasers of insurance policies know much more about the item insured than the insurance companies.
I would like to see some data to support your assertion about the low ethics of insurance companies. I do not know about any data to support your assertion.
If she had a fungus in her lungs, ie. lung infection?, with a compromised immune system her chances of living were almost nil.
Message for the father:
1. liver transplants are not a right. Otherwise, we’d be executing people for all kinds of misdemeanors to keep up with demand.
2. even if they approved the procedure, a liver still might not have been available in time, and she still could have died for lack of an organ. What do you do then? Sue a family that didn’t pull the plug soon enough so your kid could get a transplant?
If hospitals are closing trauma units for lack of payment for one time surgeries (appendectomies, sewing up gun shot wounds), then they don’t have the money to pay for organ
transplants for everyone.
If we end up with socialized medicine, we will end up with no more organ transplants. Too much money, too little benefit. After all, after the transplant is a lifetime of antirejection drugs.
With this father’s sense of entitlement, we ought to end all dead donor organ donation. Get the vultures out of trauma units, and the burden of people with donated organs complaining about having to take all the drugs, and all the rest of us expected to pay for it.
That would really spawn the stem cell to implantable organ research.
I agree. Any infection is no-go when dealing with a transplant and the usual high level of immunosuppressants.
Did you read a different article? I didn’t read where she had advanced leukemia, it did however say she had a bone marrow transplant from her brother. The doctors who were taking care of her as well as the people in charge of giving the organs both thought it was okay for her to get the procedure. I obviously didn’t read the same article as you.
I guess I have been lucky, because I have never had this much trouble involving thousands of dollars with any other industry. It's basically my opinion derived from my and several friends experience. I do realize the limitations of that experience.
Certainly ethics of insurance companies are much higher than your typical rat politician who directly votes to steal money every year.
Lack of ethics is a lack of ethics, a little or a lot is still a lack of ethics. I'm a deal from the top of the deck kind of a guy and expect to be dealt to from the top of the deck. It's not just a statement, but the way I lead my life.
I am not sure that the procedure would have helped the poor girl.
The key part of that statement is I am not sure, we will never know now. I would rather give life a chance, no matter how slim the odds.
Someting’s not right here....I cannot say exactly what it is. But this is just too odd and I am going to call out BS on everybody involved.
I speak from personal experience. The two incidents (the only two major claims in my 45 years of life) The first was when my wife was in an auto accident in which our only vehicle was totalled. We had a loan out on the car. The book had it listed at 3000$ Progressive offered me 1200$ for the car. I refused. I was told every lie in the book (that same car is listed in the local paper for 1000$ stuff like that) In the mean time I was still making payments and finally had to settle for 1800$. I paid off the rest of the loan, took my lumps and moved on.
When I bought my house I paid American Family the extra money for "replacement cost" coverage. We had a fire. this replacement cost thing wasn't what i was told it was. I was given the "depreciated" value (did you know that a brand new refrigerator loses 15% of it's value in a month?) and then was sent to replace my old stuff, and when I sent in the recipits i was to be compensated for the rest. The problem was when I sent in the recipits there was a constant problem with the checks. The check was lost, or in the mail, or they forgot to send it. The dodges were endless and rather transparent. I spent an incredible amount of time jumping through these hoops. It got frustrating. Things got heated and vague threats about insurance fraud were leveled at me.
I took the hint, dropped any further requests for compensation and will never ever give any insurance company the slightest benefit if the doubt. Ever.
She also had a judgment award until her husband spent 3/4 of the money on lawyers to kill her. The cost was relatively cheap. He only special needs to keep living was just a blender to liquefy her food. The other stuff was for therapy that would keep her limbs from freezing up. Mikey didn’t allow those for years. Her parents could have taken her home and handled her care with no help and done just fine. I have a nephew that is worse than Terri was and his mom does it all herself. He is 21, and could live a long time. Most of his worries are infections.
Bmflr, but this headline doesn’t make much sense at first glance.
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According to Intrade, the winner of the December 12th GOP debate was... Duncan Hunter.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938773/posts
I did the same thing with a Triumph Spitfire. It was worth $3000 or more, but they wanted to settle for $500. I said find me 3 cars to look at with 19000 miles on it, I will pick one and you can negotiate for it for $500. They waited a week and said there wasn't any for me to look at in Houston and raised the price to $1200. I said I'm looking at 4 in the Chronicle and the one that has 25000 miles on it is $4500, and that's the one I want. There was silence for about 15 seconds and they said my $3000 check was on the way. They, I'm sure, saw the same cars I saw in the paper, but tried to bluff.
With a little help from the press and a dash of the class warfare meme, I fear you are right.
Then the people will get to deal with a cold, heartless, government agency, and remember the days when they had it "good"
“Medical insurers are put in a difficult position.”
Boo hoo. I’m cryin’ here.
Don’t worry, your rich Uncle will be picking up the Tab for all health care soon. Don’t you know they can do a much better job at it. Just look at the SS system!
-sarc off
The “not my fault” crowd is bad enough without the lawyers creating another “it’s somebody else’s fault and they will pay” crew.
Couldn’t tell ya.
But in this case, the folks who are actually charged with making these decisions decided that this girl should get a liver.
However, the insurance company inserted itself between this girl and her doctors to insure that they would not have to foot the admittedly large bill to perform the transplant, and to insure that they would not have to pay any more health insurance claims on this very expensive case.
Hope they lose their asses on this one.
sitetest
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