It's quite easy to feel disappointed with President Obama's handling of health care reform: single-payer advocates were left out of the discussion, the public option was left to wither, and we ended up with legislation that one can rightfully argues gives the bloodsucking thugs at CIGNA and Aetna vastly more than they deserve. Even so, it is entirely unfair to claim that President Obama was in the "pocket of big insurance." What follows is a deeply disturbing example of insurance company abuse that proves -- at least to me, personally -- beyond a doubt that President Obama went into the health care reform battle -- if not always with the degree of forcefulness we would have liked -- with the right intentions.
What follows is a horrid tale of CIGNA abuse -- par for the course from the company that murdered Nataline Sarkisyan -- from real American hero Wendell Potter.
Prepare to be outraged. This is a heartbreaking tale of patient abuse by big-profit insurance, and the fact that it involves our President's cancer-stricken mother makes it all the more infuriating.
As Wendell Potter explains, it is well known that President Obama's mother had to battle both her insurance company and cancer during the last days of her life, but only recently has it come to light that the insurance company she was battling was big-profits CIGNA:
Like many others, I’ve heard President Obama talk about his mother’s insurance problems during her final months in 1995. The memory of his mother having to devote precious time and energy pleading with her insurer to pay her mounting medical bills fueled Obama’s determination to focus on passing health care reform.
But I didn’t realize until reading a new book about the president’s mother that the insurer she was pleading with was CIGNA, the one I used to work for. I wish I had known at the time. In my role as PR man for the company, I might have been able to help.
What was CIGNA doing to screw over President Obama's mother? Well, just the usual. You know, blaming -- and destroying the life of -- a patient for the fact that her doctor wrote something on a random file without ever telling her:
In August 1995, according to Janny Scott’s book, “A Singular Woman,” Dunham received a letter from the CIGNA subsidiary that had been hired by her employer to provide short-term disability benefits. Dunham assumed the company would reimburse her for expenses related to her treatment for uterine cancer.
The letter from CIGNA dashed her hopes. The company was refusing to pay because it had reason to believe the cancer had started before she enrolled in the policy. Scott wrote that the company based its decision on notes it obtained from a gynecologist Dunham had seen months earlier for abdominal pain.
Even though the doctor did not tell Dunham she might have cancer, she made a note in Dunham’s medical record that the pain she was experiencing might be the result of a malignancy.
Scott wrote that while undergoing chemotherapy and dealing with the accompanying hair loss and sickness, Dunham had to devote enormous amounts of time communicating with CIGNA in an effort to get the company to reconsider.
With nowhere to turn, Obama's mother did what most of was would do in her situation -- she threatened to call an attorney, her son, and sue the bloodsucking insurance thugs:
Making no headway on her own, she finally informed the company she was turning over her case to “my son and attorney, Barack Obama.”
Unfortunately, as Mr. Potter explains, at the time of this abuse President Obama was not an intimidating enough individual for the Philadelphia-based death panel:
Obama was indeed a lawyer by then, but his name would have meant little to CIGNA in 1995. He was still serving as a civil rights attorney and lecturer at the University of Chicago law school. He simply was not important enough to really help his mother.
If Obama had been elected to the Senate before his mother got sick, her story might have had a different ending. A call from Senator Obama undoubtedly would have elevated her case immediately to high profile status. I had joined CIGNA two years earlier, so I probably would have been brought in to assess the situation and offer counsel from a public relations perspective.
Insurance company executives insist that their coverage decisions are not influenced by the threat of bad publicity, that they are made solely on the basis of medical necessity (as determined by them) and the limitations of a particular policy (also as determined by them).
Don’t believe it for a minute. Denials are reversed as a matter of routine after a PR guy — someone like me — informs the CEO of a call from a reporter or politician.
We constantly hear from the GOP how single payer or a public option would mean Soviet-style care. Well, this is freaking Soviet-style care! If you're important enough to embarrass the ruling thugs, you get care. If you're not, well, die quickly!
And this was 1995! Clearly, this kind of horrible behavior was straight out of the CIGNA playbook, as the Sarkisyans could attest from their own 2007 experience with the CIGNA death panel.
A nation that has a health care system where care is rationed according to who can shout the loudest when the big-profit insurance company tries to screw over your mother or daughter is indeed morally bankrupt.
The only solution is to eliminate the horrific stain of the big-profit insurance companies by implementing real, improved Medicare for all.
We are behind you Vermont! And we know, California, that you will be next!
Everybody in, nobody out! Everybody in, nobody out! Everybody in, nobody out! Everybody in, nobody out! Everybody in, nobody out! Everybody in, nobody out!
CIGNA's history is a history of shame, but it is shame with which our politicians have been complicit. Let's put those bloodsucking thugs out of business -- SINGLE PAYER NOW!
UPDATE: Here's a NY Times review of the aforementioned book. Again, with a shout out to CIGNA cruelty:
A 52-year-old woman whose last year before succumbing to cancer was spent in part trying to convince the Cigna insurance company that she should not be disqualified from benefits by virtue of a “pre-existing condition.” These are the parts of her life that resonate with our cultural anxieties about good mothering, access to health care and, of course, race.