When CIGNA Health Care insurance denied coverage to Nataline Sarkisyan, it signed the 17-year-old's death warrant. Eventually, as a result of a public outcry, CIGNA relented, but it was too late and the young woman died Dec. 21, 10 days after CIGNA first refused coverage. Sarkisyan needed a liver transplant, which CIGNA denied, ignoring the urgent appeal of her physicians claiming the procedure was "experimental." CIGNA committed murder because some bean counter decided that Nataline Sarkisyan's life was not as important as CIGNA's bottom line. CIGNA, by the way, advertises itself on its healthcare Web site, as "a business of caring."
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger supports a new healthcare plan that would require all California physicians to purchase insurance products from big companies like CIGNA, but it doesn't address the problems that resulted in Nataline Sarkisyan's death. I guess her parents won't be voting for the govern-ator's re-election. And for a wealthy man like Arnold, the issue of paying for heathcare is not a problem. If one of his kids needed a liver transplant, he'll just write a check. We should all be so lucky. Attorney Mark Geragos, who represents the Sarkisyan family, said last week that he will as the California State Attorney to press murder or manslaughter charges against Cigna HealthCare. Well, that was my first thought, but I live in the real world, so I know that will request will go nowhere.
A side issue, of course, is that the hospital, which was aware of the seriousness of Sarkisyan's condition did not offer to perform the transplant procedure without first being assured it would be paid. Hospitals in the United States are famous for offering free medical services to any Iraqi kid who is injured, but will not do the same for US citizens.
I realize that neither insurance companies or hospitals are in business to lose money. But they are playing with people's lives and something substantive must be done. The first liver transplant was performed in 1963. Living donor liver transplantation have been done since 1983. I have no idea on what CGNA based its decision to refuse coverage because liver transplants are experimental and fall outside the scope of coverage. But they took the Sarkisyan's premium checks and refused to cover a life-saving procedure that has a track record of success. It was only when they were pushed by the concerted efforts of citizens and the California Nurses Association that the company reversed their decision, and probably they do so because of the bad publicity. But, by that time, it was too late and Nataline Sarkisyan died. Paying for insurance coverage will not assure you that you will receive needed care. More insurance is not the answer.
The American Medical Association will be happy to assure you that we have the best medical care in the world--but what no one will address is that people sometimes do not have access to that care. What no one will admit is that profits are more important to giants like CIGNA than the life of one of their subscribers. Profit is at the bottom of everything. Profit is the reason why the American Medical Association and physicians fear universal healthcare. If we have a system of universal healthcare, we wouldn't be at the mercy of heartless giants like CIGNA. Nataline Sarkisyan survived cancer only to be done in by corporate greed. And no one will pay for her death, no one will be held accountable. Should the Sarkisyan family sue, CIGNA will settle out of court and raise premiums to cover their financial loss. Meanwhile, their investors will continue to profit from the misery of others.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Clockwork Orange as a sign of the times
When I first saw Clockwork Orange in 1971, I was so horrified and shocked that it took me 20 years before I could see it again, and another 12 months before I could really study it. Alex DeLarge is a truly bad, bad boy, and he does terrible things. But the message of this picture, is that people have a right to make their own choices about their lives--even if these are bad choices.
At the stroke of Midnight on Jan 31, no only does the old year pass away, but so does the right of people to smoke in public places. Now the national nannies will tell you that they are banning a still legal behavior for your own good and for the whole good of society. What really happened is that insurance companies, who are making more incursions into your life than you know, have made it less profitable for businesses to operate with a smoking section. And their next stop is your local restaurant, where they will decide for you what you can eat. The medical community in Great Britain is now experimenting with the practice of refusing to treat people who are physically fit. The theory seems to be that if you are fat, for example, you deserve to die of a heart attack.
In all of the second hand smoking studies, I have yet to see one that separates out the harmful events of our polluted environment. There is big money to be made when singling out one industry as the cause of a rise in lung and heart disease. Second hand smoke may indeed have negative effects. I have no problem with being relegated to a smoking section. I abide by the no-smoking rules of my friends who have seen the light and kicked the habit. But now I cannot smoke within 15 feet of a building and I promise you we will all go the way of California and smoking will be prohibited even in the privacy of one's own home.
I have no problem with indoor smoking bans, but the outdoor bans are ridiculous. Which brings us back to Clockwork Orange. Alex was therapeutically cured of his anti-social tendencies, which leaves him open and defenseless to attack and makes him more socially acceptable but less of himself.
At the stroke of Midnight on Jan 31, no only does the old year pass away, but so does the right of people to smoke in public places. Now the national nannies will tell you that they are banning a still legal behavior for your own good and for the whole good of society. What really happened is that insurance companies, who are making more incursions into your life than you know, have made it less profitable for businesses to operate with a smoking section. And their next stop is your local restaurant, where they will decide for you what you can eat. The medical community in Great Britain is now experimenting with the practice of refusing to treat people who are physically fit. The theory seems to be that if you are fat, for example, you deserve to die of a heart attack.
In all of the second hand smoking studies, I have yet to see one that separates out the harmful events of our polluted environment. There is big money to be made when singling out one industry as the cause of a rise in lung and heart disease. Second hand smoke may indeed have negative effects. I have no problem with being relegated to a smoking section. I abide by the no-smoking rules of my friends who have seen the light and kicked the habit. But now I cannot smoke within 15 feet of a building and I promise you we will all go the way of California and smoking will be prohibited even in the privacy of one's own home.
I have no problem with indoor smoking bans, but the outdoor bans are ridiculous. Which brings us back to Clockwork Orange. Alex was therapeutically cured of his anti-social tendencies, which leaves him open and defenseless to attack and makes him more socially acceptable but less of himself.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
The Death of Newspapers
"A GOOD newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself." --Arthur Miller, 1961
Chicago used to be a great newspaper city, most major metropolitan were. And then he Rupert Murdochs of the world got into business, not to report the news, but to make money. The once proud Chicago Sun-Times was gutted when Hollinger International took over and siphoned off more than $400 million right into Conrad Black's bottomless pockets. The cuts that have decimated the small community papers owned by the Chicago Sun-Times, are now at the paper's door. Fewer reporters are expected to get the news, and those fewer reporters are usually less experienced recent journalism school grads who work for less. Where two reporters worked on a story, one reporter works and he loser is the public.
Now, we can say that newspapers have been done in my the Internet, but we know that's not true. Newspapers have been done in by the greed of corporations who buy companies for the profits they generate, not the reporting they provide. Advertising dollars are what keeps newspapers alive, and those dollars have, in the past 10 years, been moving to the Internet. According to a 2006 article in The Economist: "In Switzerland and the Netherlands newspapers have lost half their classified advertising to the internet." That same year, the venerable New York Times came under fire not because of its reporting, but because its share prices fell. And the first place so-called modern newspaper barons look for cuts is in the newsroom. What we have today is more media and less news.
So what does this mean? Well, when politicians burgle their opponents' offices who will tell the story? If, as Benjamin Franklin said, "It is the fist responsibility of every citizen to question authority," who will publish these questions or the public response? A newspaper does more than investigating abuses or even spreading general news, it holds the governments to account. Bloggers do the same thing, but we do not do it with the same educated background, eye to detail, and mania for accuracy (well, some bloggers anyway), and we certainly don't do it objectively.
Giants die, and when they die they fall harder and leave a gapping wound for the rest of us to ponder. Newspapers are important on both the local and national level. The loss of talented people who are willing to report the news objectively but with intelligence leaves the rest of is poorer.
Chicago used to be a great newspaper city, most major metropolitan were. And then he Rupert Murdochs of the world got into business, not to report the news, but to make money. The once proud Chicago Sun-Times was gutted when Hollinger International took over and siphoned off more than $400 million right into Conrad Black's bottomless pockets. The cuts that have decimated the small community papers owned by the Chicago Sun-Times, are now at the paper's door. Fewer reporters are expected to get the news, and those fewer reporters are usually less experienced recent journalism school grads who work for less. Where two reporters worked on a story, one reporter works and he loser is the public.
Now, we can say that newspapers have been done in my the Internet, but we know that's not true. Newspapers have been done in by the greed of corporations who buy companies for the profits they generate, not the reporting they provide. Advertising dollars are what keeps newspapers alive, and those dollars have, in the past 10 years, been moving to the Internet. According to a 2006 article in The Economist: "In Switzerland and the Netherlands newspapers have lost half their classified advertising to the internet." That same year, the venerable New York Times came under fire not because of its reporting, but because its share prices fell. And the first place so-called modern newspaper barons look for cuts is in the newsroom. What we have today is more media and less news.
So what does this mean? Well, when politicians burgle their opponents' offices who will tell the story? If, as Benjamin Franklin said, "It is the fist responsibility of every citizen to question authority," who will publish these questions or the public response? A newspaper does more than investigating abuses or even spreading general news, it holds the governments to account. Bloggers do the same thing, but we do not do it with the same educated background, eye to detail, and mania for accuracy (well, some bloggers anyway), and we certainly don't do it objectively.
Giants die, and when they die they fall harder and leave a gapping wound for the rest of us to ponder. Newspapers are important on both the local and national level. The loss of talented people who are willing to report the news objectively but with intelligence leaves the rest of is poorer.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
And now more information about dead Diana
Ten years dead and Diana (no other identification needed) remains a staple of the tabloid press. For whatever reason, the British government has bowed to the demands of wealthy arms dealer turned store keeper Mohamed Al Fayed and Diana's own conspiracy minded followers and has mounted another expensive inquest. Unable to accept that accidents happen, even to the incredibly wealthy, a decade after the fatal car crash, people still insist Diana was murdered. Of all the conspiracy theories I have read, my favorite includes a stealth tank. Yes, you read that right. Some people posit that a British Army Tank, hidden in the tunnel, moved forward to crush the speeding Mercedes and then rushed away unseen and unheard.
I suppose to establish motive, the inquest seems unhealthily concerned with Diana's active and rather public sex life. To whit: Was he pregnant? Did she mean to marry Dodi Al Fayed? Did she want a quiet middle class life as the wife of Dr. Hasat Kahn? Did she invite the press to her public affair with Dodi to get back at Charles. None of this has anything to do with the accident, but it feeds the unending public appetite for intimate information about a very public person.
Of all the things revealed by this side show, my favorite is the contributions of Raine, Countess Spencer, Diana's publicly hated step-mother. We are now to believe that cast out by the cold hearted Royal Family, Diana turned for comfort not to her own mother, with whom she was not on speaking terms, but to her step-mother, who she had nick-named "Acid Raine." Raine married Diana's father after his first wife, Diana's mother, decamped with another man, losing custody of her children. When she lived, Diana had not one good thing to say about Raine, but now that she's dead, Raine, who is on the board of the al Fayed owned Harrod's Department Store, has decided to rewrite history. When her father died, Diana, then Princess of Wales, instructed her servants to place all of Raine's in plastic trash bags, which were then kicked down the palatial family home steps, reportedly by Diana's brother. This is the same brother who refused Diana's request to live on the family estate but who castigated the Royal Family for their callous ways at Diana's public funeral. And he was living in South Africa at the time. But Raine publicly stated that since Diana's divorce, they had grown close and that Diana confided to her that she planned to marry Dodi Al Fayed.
So, what does this have to do with the car accident? Well, apparently, the Royal Family targeted Diana because she was about to marry Dodi, even though people who knew Diana say that no such marriage was in the works.
From previous inquests, we know that Diana died from injuries she incurred when the speeding car in which she was riding came to an abrupt stop against a pole in a Paris tunnel. American physicians, who were not there and who did not examine Diana, claim that had the accident happened in the US, they could have saved her life. And while I question French emergency methods in this instance, I think second guessing what was done from a distance is both unfair and unimportant. All I know is that if Diana had worn a seat belt, she might have walked away with a few bruises and even more publicity.
In the end, Diana may have been the victim of her own publicity machine. She was fighting for the public heart, using her considerable weapons of physical attractiveness and her connection with various charities, some of which had grown tired of her act. Diana wanted to ruin the Prince of Wales, and she did. If she couldn't be queen, he couldn't be king.
Deeper still, it was have been galling for a young, attractive woman to lose out in the love sweepstakes to a middle age hausfrau who is more at home in riding cloths than haut couture. All women have been there and we understand the sting. On the other, when a woman of no obvious physical appeal beats out a beautiful blond, I find myself muttering, "You go, girl."
In her ire, Diana did her level best to bring down the British Monarchy, and she may have succeeded. But I think the problem was that in doing so, Diana began to believe her own press and that is a dangerous thing. Dead now for 10 years, Diana continues to haunt the Royal Family, which I am sure now looks back with horror on its plan to find a suitable bride for their unmarried heir. Oddly, I think the smoke was clearing when Diana died and she had come to some civilized understanding with her former husband. She was out of the Royal Family, because she wanted a divorce. She dragged them through the mud in print and on television, so clearly she was willing to burn her bridges. She was stripped of her HRH because she said, perhaps in a moment of piqué, that she didn't want it. Had she lived, Charles probably would have remained unmarried, and maybe miserable, which is what she may have wanted. But who really knows. And although we now know that Diana may have accepted Dodi's advances for any number of reasons, she apparently did not consider theirs a serious relationship. Diana loved the limelight--who couldn't do without public adulation, but in the end that's what did her in. She thought she could control the press, and she was wrong.
The thing is Diana is dead and her bones are being picked over for no other reason that it makes good press. I find that sad and ugly. She lies alone on a island, finally achieving the quiet of the family estate denied her during her life. Her brother, who so vociferously opposed his step-mother's plan to turn the family seat Althrop into a tourist attraction, opened the estate to the public, selling trinkets decorated with his dead sister's image. And while some of the profits go to charity, some of the profits go into Althrop's pockets. Diana is now a cottage industry, feeding those who refused to help or who haunted her in her lifetime. I add to that sorry list of greedy relatives and press and avaricious former butlers, the public harpies who keep the myth and the ire alive.
Diana's dead. It's over. Move on.
I suppose to establish motive, the inquest seems unhealthily concerned with Diana's active and rather public sex life. To whit: Was he pregnant? Did she mean to marry Dodi Al Fayed? Did she want a quiet middle class life as the wife of Dr. Hasat Kahn? Did she invite the press to her public affair with Dodi to get back at Charles. None of this has anything to do with the accident, but it feeds the unending public appetite for intimate information about a very public person.
Of all the things revealed by this side show, my favorite is the contributions of Raine, Countess Spencer, Diana's publicly hated step-mother. We are now to believe that cast out by the cold hearted Royal Family, Diana turned for comfort not to her own mother, with whom she was not on speaking terms, but to her step-mother, who she had nick-named "Acid Raine." Raine married Diana's father after his first wife, Diana's mother, decamped with another man, losing custody of her children. When she lived, Diana had not one good thing to say about Raine, but now that she's dead, Raine, who is on the board of the al Fayed owned Harrod's Department Store, has decided to rewrite history. When her father died, Diana, then Princess of Wales, instructed her servants to place all of Raine's in plastic trash bags, which were then kicked down the palatial family home steps, reportedly by Diana's brother. This is the same brother who refused Diana's request to live on the family estate but who castigated the Royal Family for their callous ways at Diana's public funeral. And he was living in South Africa at the time. But Raine publicly stated that since Diana's divorce, they had grown close and that Diana confided to her that she planned to marry Dodi Al Fayed.
So, what does this have to do with the car accident? Well, apparently, the Royal Family targeted Diana because she was about to marry Dodi, even though people who knew Diana say that no such marriage was in the works.
From previous inquests, we know that Diana died from injuries she incurred when the speeding car in which she was riding came to an abrupt stop against a pole in a Paris tunnel. American physicians, who were not there and who did not examine Diana, claim that had the accident happened in the US, they could have saved her life. And while I question French emergency methods in this instance, I think second guessing what was done from a distance is both unfair and unimportant. All I know is that if Diana had worn a seat belt, she might have walked away with a few bruises and even more publicity.
In the end, Diana may have been the victim of her own publicity machine. She was fighting for the public heart, using her considerable weapons of physical attractiveness and her connection with various charities, some of which had grown tired of her act. Diana wanted to ruin the Prince of Wales, and she did. If she couldn't be queen, he couldn't be king.
Deeper still, it was have been galling for a young, attractive woman to lose out in the love sweepstakes to a middle age hausfrau who is more at home in riding cloths than haut couture. All women have been there and we understand the sting. On the other, when a woman of no obvious physical appeal beats out a beautiful blond, I find myself muttering, "You go, girl."
In her ire, Diana did her level best to bring down the British Monarchy, and she may have succeeded. But I think the problem was that in doing so, Diana began to believe her own press and that is a dangerous thing. Dead now for 10 years, Diana continues to haunt the Royal Family, which I am sure now looks back with horror on its plan to find a suitable bride for their unmarried heir. Oddly, I think the smoke was clearing when Diana died and she had come to some civilized understanding with her former husband. She was out of the Royal Family, because she wanted a divorce. She dragged them through the mud in print and on television, so clearly she was willing to burn her bridges. She was stripped of her HRH because she said, perhaps in a moment of piqué, that she didn't want it. Had she lived, Charles probably would have remained unmarried, and maybe miserable, which is what she may have wanted. But who really knows. And although we now know that Diana may have accepted Dodi's advances for any number of reasons, she apparently did not consider theirs a serious relationship. Diana loved the limelight--who couldn't do without public adulation, but in the end that's what did her in. She thought she could control the press, and she was wrong.
The thing is Diana is dead and her bones are being picked over for no other reason that it makes good press. I find that sad and ugly. She lies alone on a island, finally achieving the quiet of the family estate denied her during her life. Her brother, who so vociferously opposed his step-mother's plan to turn the family seat Althrop into a tourist attraction, opened the estate to the public, selling trinkets decorated with his dead sister's image. And while some of the profits go to charity, some of the profits go into Althrop's pockets. Diana is now a cottage industry, feeding those who refused to help or who haunted her in her lifetime. I add to that sorry list of greedy relatives and press and avaricious former butlers, the public harpies who keep the myth and the ire alive.
Diana's dead. It's over. Move on.
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