CIGNA Denies Cancer Patient Care, CEO Makes $120 Million In Five Years - Not A Coincidence
By dday Monday Sep 14, 2009 3:00pm(I have been doing some work as a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their Sick For Profit campaign. Visit us on Facebook.)
Today Brave New Films released their second installment in the Sick For Profit series, taking a look at the corrupt practices of CIGNA, denying care to their customers while their lead executives rake in millions and lead lavish lifestyles.
Meet Jo Joshua Godfrey. She had cancer without knowing for over a year.
"I would go to CIGNA and they would tell me I had bronchitis and give me medicine and send me home. No matter what medicine they gave me I wouldn't get better. Then the CIGNA Director called me up and she told me that there was nothing wrong with me at all. I called the doctor, and I came with my film and my CAT scan and he just put it in, it took exactly thirty seconds. He told me, 'You have cancer,' and he said the reason CIGNA did not want to give you your records is they've known right way back for years that you have cancer and they're not going to treat you."
CIGNA took in $19.1 billion dollars in revenue last year, with a $292 million dollar income. That doesn't include the salaries given to people like CEO Ed Hanway. He made a cool $12 million last year, and over the past five years he took in $120 million. Hanway has $28 million in unexcercised stock options. The company corporate jets, also not seen in profit statements, cost $68 million. This money is gained, as former communications director Wendell Potter says in this video, through denying claims and dumping the sick, enhancing the value of the company for Wall Street investors. The effect on people's lives, meanwhile, is tragic. Nataline Sarkysian, featured in the Americans United For Change advertisement, lost her life after CIGNA repeated denied her a liver transplant, despite the family having full coverage.
Meet Stephen Coddington, the wife of Marian, a stroke victim:
The case manager at the nursing home called me in and was really upset, and she said, "CIGNA is wanting to discontinue therapy with her. The doctors called and appeals were denied." It has been a day-in and day-out fight. Every talk that I've had with them, it's been, how can we wiggle off this hook.
This is the human cost for an insurance company's existence, for the record profits and supreme lifestyle of their executives. Welcome to the American health insurance industry. Instead of helping policyholders attain the health security they need for their families, big insurance companies get rich by denying coverage to patients. Now they're sending lobbyists to Washington, DC to twist the arms of lawmakers to oppose reform of the status quo. Why? Because the status quo pays.
CIGNA is not a special case in the insurance industry. It's perfectly normal and expected for a corporation to maximize profits. The difference with insurance is that the profit comes at the expense of your well-being, and frankly, all the regulations in the world won't substantively change that. The best way to fight back is through exposure, a juxtaposition of the human luxury paid for by human misery.
So help us shine this spotlight. CIGNA's advertising tagline is 'A Business of Caring.' We think they ought to come up with something more appropriate for their actual practices. If you come up with one, post it on our Facebook page. Here are some examples. We'll send the best over to CIGNA. In addition, Jo Joshua Godfrey will join SEIU Healthcare 775NW outside the CIGNA corporate offices in Seattle, Washington today as they demand quality and affordable health care for every American as a fundamental right and not a privilege.
And send this video to your friends. Everyone needs to know what's at stake in health care reform. This kind of denial of coverage can happen to anyone under the current system.
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The Stoopid Peepul apparently haven't figured it out yet.
Normal if you ONLY think in money and numbers. To anyone else it is patently appalling. Welcome to the USA, heh.
Had their health insurance about five years ago... awful company... nothing but hassles. Glad nobody in my family got really sick under their coverage.
Obama is amazing, he retroactively installed the death panels years ago. Muhahahaha, The liberal agenda is almost complete.
Count me as 1, who paid and got dropped when I needed it.
The piercing pain in my ear is getting worse, very worse, I went to doctors for years, with this problem, none would help me.
The retro movie channel reran The Rainmaker this weekend (1997). It's disgusting that the same corruption and ripoffs that are portrayed in the film continue unabated. The only reform Health Insurance is for is one that will limit the payments to their victims ie tort reform.
We already have death panels and rationing.
think these big flag waving Med Corpse'orations are "lookin out fur me by golly!
"Nothing says freedom like denying claims."
Everyone should read John Grisham's "The Rainmaker", or if you want to get the gist of it in a couple of hours, watch the movie instead.
The book is better than the movie (as is usually the case), but it lays out the type of thing that shady insurance firms do so they don't have to pay out on legitimate claims.
and then they tell you they don't cover it.
Slick
should be outlawed. Some things should never be for profit!
Now thassa big meat ball!!!
that isn't engaged in some kind of warfare against each other for profit and market share.
That's what they teach in business school these days "business as war".
What's the point?
I was paying $11,000 a year for premiums alone, yet had the insurance company routinely deny claims they were supposed to pay for, based on someone filling out paperwork incorrectly.
That's not healthcare, it's paying something to get nothing. And that's THEFT.
The irony, that people are out fighting for that kind of treatment, is astounding.
My settlement with the ins. company of the driver was that they were to pay my related medical expenses for the rest of my life.
About 5 years after the accident they started rejecting bills for my ongoing treatment. I was unable to coordinate things because of my recovery (head injury) and unbeknownst to me my dad's insurance covered me instead, partially, and partly he paid.
About 10 years after the accident things got worse and I contacted the insurance company to cover some of my latest expenses. They turned me down. The reason they gave? Since I hadn't had any expenses in ten years, my case was now considered closed. The reason I hadn't, of course, is because they had denied THOSE claims.
I contacted everyone there I could - they repeatedly lied. They gave different reasons every time I called. They kept claiming they couldn't talk to me then because they had to get my files "from the archives" and would call back, of course they never called back.
I am now disabled mostly as a result of that accident. Medicare is covering me. The insurance company that was supposed to? Nothing.
It's official company policy to lie. It's standard insurance industry practice to violate the terms of their contracts.
The business model of the medical insurance industry is to promise a product, receive payment for that product, and then do everything possible not to deliver that product.
They are vultures. They make their money by exploiting the weak, lying and deceiving and cheating them.
Insurance execs find new ways to lie to and cheat the sick... the more successfully they rip people off, the more multi-million dollar bonuses they get. In a sane society they would be getting prison sentences instead.
I am against the death penalty for people, but not for "corporate persons."
We need single payer. Execute these criminal enterprises.
Were you represented by an attorney when you were injured or did the insurance company convince you that they would do the right thing?
Pick an "insurer"...pick an "HMO"...there's your freakin' death panels.
What a lot of these rubes don't understand is that WHENEVER a decision is made about your healthcare, it's made BY PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW, NEVER SEE, AND you can BET your last dime THEY DON'T CARE ONE DAMN BIT ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT you live or die. Oh, and by the way, JUST TRY SUING THEM IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG...THEY HAVE REGIMENTS OF LAWYERS FOR DAMAGE CONTROL..THEY WAIT YOU OUT UNTIL THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS (yes, there is one)runs out.
Just pay your premiums...that's a good sucker....
Oh, yes...and IF ANY EMPLOYEE OF ANY OF THESE "INSURERS" OR "HMO'S" ever says ANYTHING ABOUT HOW YOUR TREATMENT OR CARE WAS HANDLED...they're OUT.
You think your Doctor is making your health care decisions?
Think again.
Your Doctor is incentive-motivated. The motivation is MONEY, just like for the CEO of the company.
end of story.
politicians they bought who legislate on their behalf. Why do you think the insurance companies want "tort reform" so badly? It is interesting to me that they don't want to completely do away with the law suits, so that they can still steal from doctors for malpractice insurance. They have been at this for a long time. The insurance company ideal would be to collect every cent they can get their hands on, and pay out nothing at all ever.
This is why we need tort reform. So all the people screwed by modern medicine don't get their day in court.
Lets send all the screwed medical cases to an arbitration panel made of retired doctors and Phrama execs. Then we can make the medical profession even more like Wall St.
Be optimistic, the worse things get for the masses the closer we get to the tipping point of action.
for not going after these scumsuckers with a rifle,
seeing as how they are deliberatly being deliberately murdered by these corporations.
On second thought, no I dont.
"Yeah, well, maybe some things aren't exactly perfect right now, but just wait till you see how bad GOVERNMENT will screw it up!!!1one"
So you're saying I should invest with Cigna?
Profit Driven Healthcare: They get the profit, you get driven. Any healthcare is purely coincidental.
It's undeniable.
Insurance companies do NOT make their money by providing medical services.
They make their money by NOT providing medical services. That's a simple, undeniable fact - that;s what insurance is. They are gambling that they won't have to spend money on you. By definition, that's what insurance is. (brainwashed righties will plug their ears when you say that though.)
So how is it not just obvious, just plain common sense, that a company that makes a profit by NOT providing medical care thus automatically has a built-in incentive to find new ways NOT to provide medical care? To move as much of their "product" as possible - their "product" being NOT providing medical care?
How can it not be blindingly obvious that an industry that by definition makes money by collecting payment for services NOT RENDERED will strive to NOT RENDER?
The wealth of the few is made from the poverty of many.
in the first degree?
Legal, just like slavery used to be.
Most criminals who get caught make the crucial mistake of failing to have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the group of people who make the law.
...would the sheep shrug and accept obscenities like this as "just business, nothing personal."
In Europe, streetcars would be overturned, police cars burned, and politicians would crap in their pants.
would be enough for the opposition to present a censure motion against the president in the parliament, most likely leading to his removal and the dissolution of his government with a subsequent general election. In which the party that would be the equivalent to the Dems would be literally wiped out of the electoral map for supporting such a "reform."
That is how far to the right, and how corporatized this country has become. Not that they don't have their very own set of issues in the old world, but at least they have agreed to have a minimum of agreed baselines of what they consider living in a society implies.
Healthcare management is not a profit proposition, period.
These fucking corporations want all the rights of real persons?
Fine. Charge them with murder.
How many tens of thousands have died from their dishonesty, negligence and downright greed? When a person kills another person in this country, whether directly or indirectly, he faces charges ranging from manslaughter to first-degree homicide.
They want the privileges accorded the rest of us? They can take the lumps the rest of us take as well.
{Edited. SiteMonitor}
They are lobbying for the right to AVOID BEING SUED for this sort of blatant negligence.
Let's see you or I get away with that.
contribute to politicians without limitation. BTW, just try to sue them for negligence. That would require a responsibility to exist on their part, and the only one they have, legally, is to make a profit. So what would be the basis for a law suit? With the current law, they can be sued for paying out too much money. I am absolutely serious. I do not understand why people are not in the streets screaming about this mess. Single payer is the only thing that will work.
I grew up next door to their CEO. He was a cut-throat little "Alex P. Keaton" Junior Republican wanna-be even back then. This kid would have sold his mother for a dollar when he was 12 years old. By high-school he was an intolerable jerk. Doesn't surprise me at all that they let their customers die to turn a profit.
Just learned the other day from a co-worker that several of her doctors will soon be refusing to accept our insurance provider, United Healthcare. Why? Because they cannot get United to pay them for their services.
Several years ago the same thing happened here where I live. I went to the doctor and the lady asked me what insurance I had. She then explained that they would no longer be taking Blue Cross/Blue Shield because they don't like to pay their bills either.
How long did they spend trying to find someone who they could use to say that insurance companies aren't fair. I doubt this story greatly. I personally know someone who was killed in a construction accident and the government denied his wife workman's comp money because she was considering separation. They brought in friends who testified that they were considering it and the judge ruled no workman's comp. Because it was on the job, no other insurance covered the claims. Is it really going to be better if the government takes over the health care? No way. In 15 years, you'll have all of the similar arguments as the gov desperately tries to cover costs. Fraud will be everywhere, the costs will be greater than when for-profit companies were doing it. You can't really believe this stuff.
people like CEO Ed Hanway are running health care. Could you imagine how horrible the world would be if all sick people could go to the doctor when they needed to? The horror. Some rich pecker-head may have to wait 5 seconds to see THEIR Doctor. We couldn't have that now could we. Nope, far better Ed makes the big money and the little folks can rot.....
Where do people like Ed Hanway live?
Don't get me wrong - I'm a liberal, single-payer-supporting, Kucinich-supporting Democrat. But in that first story, the woman says she "went to CIGNA", and "CIGNA told me I had bronchitis", and "CIGNA gave me medicine and sent me home."
CIGNA is an insurance company, not a hospital - is that right? How could CIGNA diagnose anyone, or give them medicines?
Can anyone give me some clarification here? If I'm wrong about how CIGNA operates, please let me know. If I'm right, then this woman's testimony needs to be deleted from the video, because it destroys the video's credibility.
Since posting this, I've learned that Cigna owned and operated 29 wholly owned health clinics where they employed they doctors. There's more information about their clinic troubles here:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Cigna+draws+reg...
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