We posted this story yesterday with an update to the heartbreaking result. While battling CIGNA for a new liver, her family and friends fought and protested until CIGNA finally gave in, but it was too late---the seventeen-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan died.
ABC has the video of the story as it unfolded. And the only mention of health care that we get from the GOP presidential candidates is to use the word "socialized" medicine, as if it's something scary. What's scary is what happened to Nataline. I'm sure her family is so very happy we don't have socialized medicine today. Let's see some Iowa residents bring this case up to Huck, Rudy/McC and Williard. They had a liver for her last week. We know the media is incapable of doing some basic reporting.
Check out guaranteedhealthcare...CNS released this statement:
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee today blasted insurance giant CIGNA for failing to approve a liver transplant one week earlier for listen to 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, who tragically died last night just hours after CIGNA relented and agreed to the procedure following a massive national outcry.
On Dec. 11, four leading physicians, including the surgical director of the Pediatric Liver Transplant Program at UCLA, wrote to CIGNA urging the company to reverse its denial. The physicians said that Nataline “currently meets criteria to be listed as Status 1A” for a transplant. They also challenged CIGNA’s denial which the company said occurred because their benefit plan “does not cover experimental, investigational and unproven services,” to which the doctors replied, “Nataline’s case is in fact none of the above.”...read on