There is no part of hell hot enough for these people.From the Huffington Post, excerpt:
A CIGNA employee gave the finger — literally — to a woman whose daughter died after the insurance giant refused to cover her liver transplant.
Hilda and Krikor Sarkisyan went to CIGNA’s Philadelphia headquarters, along with supporters from the California Nurses Association, to confront the CEO Edward Hanway over the death of her 17-year-old child.
In 2007, Nataline Sarkisyan was denied a liver transplant by the company, on the grounds that the operation was “too experimental” to be covered. Nine days later it changed its mind, in response to protests outside its office. It was too late: Nataline died hours later.
“CIGNA killed my daughter,” Nataline’s mother Hilda told security. “I want an apology.” Sarkisyan was not able to speak to Hanway; a communications specialist talked to her instead. After their conversation, employees heckled the group from a balcony; one man gave them the finger. CIGNA called the police and had the family and their friends escorted from the building.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/cigna-employee-flips-off_n_314189.htmlMost likely low-level employees making maybe 40K a year with no actual control over the transplant situation who just had their day fucked up. Not saying the story isn’t heartbreaking, or that the health insurance industry shouldn’t be erased from the planet; just that the flipping off tidbit doesn’t really say anything about the health care debate.
Fuck this fucking fuck. If anything, it’s pretty illustrative of why the health insurance industry needs to be reformed, if dismantling isn’t a viable option.
Assuming it was a low level minions heckling protesters, either
(a) an insurance company’s culture is such that even low level employees who don’t directly benefit from the industry’s nickel-and-diming can’t at least empathize with the protesters and take the company’s side, reflexively or by training, or
(b) low level employees are so disconnected from the discourse that they can’t understand that their industry is a focus of controversy and that their jobs deal, however indirectly, with life and death, and protesters pissed off about a teenager’s death are merely “assholes ruining my day”.
Look, we aren’t discussing East German soldiers who were just following orders and I’m not about to Godwin this reblog. But an anecdote like this is useful in countering the canard about how healthcare reform means medical decisions will be made by heartless bureaucrats. Which isn’t exactly wrong, except life-or-death decisions are already made by bean counters. The difference is, at least government’s responsibility is to the patients and not the shareholders and C-level officers.
Well, that, or the employees were just being dickfarts.
