I am 14 years old and I am a victim of medical malpractice. I am writing to the Congress and the Senate because you need to help the victims of medical malpractice. I was ill, my head hurt and my mom took me to the doctor. I had frequent nose bleeds and bad headaches. I think this started in the end of 1992 or early 1993. They said I was okay, and I remember one doctor was so mean to my mom and me; she didn’t even want to talk about it. She said it was all in my head, that I was okay. 1993 and 1994 were not good years in my life. I was unhappy. My mom was always sick, always in bed coughing, always going to CIGNA getting medicine, always too tired. My mom was not the same mom any more; my head hurt on and off, and I tired not to bother my mom as I could see how ill she was. She was always depressed, always crying, and always moody and coughing. I would yell at her to shut up at night and she kept us all awake, now I feel bad.

In February 1994, I was depressed, my head was hurting, and I took pills from the medicine cabinet, it wasn’t the first time I did this, but my mom was sick she didn’t even notice. Each time I took more and one day my mom came in to wake me up and I wouldn’t get up, I was too tired. My mom said that’s it, get dressed; we are going to CIGNA right away. I went there and CIGNA doctors saw me. They sent me to a mental health place and neither of these two places even knew what I had done. My mom walked me about and I told her what I ad done. Later that day she said how could she live if I died. My mom cried because she was so tired she blamed herself because she wasn’t doing enough. I made my mom a promise not to do this again. My mom called CIGNA and got upset about how they failed to see I had tried to kill myself, asking them what kind of doctors they were. My mom screamed so much they agreed to give me a complete physical. At the physical in early March, we complained so much about my head they agreed to do scans of my head. This went on for about two and a half months, one scan after another, and finally the doctor said I needed to have my sinus washed out, that was in the end of May. My mom asked if this was urgent, did it need to be done right away, the doctor answered it was not urgent. My mom said we would have it done in the summer vacation.

From May to August, my mom got very ill. She went to the doctor and they put her on disability for 6 weeks. In the middle of July, I had a dream that my mom had lung cancer and she was going to die. My mom got very upset when I told her this. By the beginning of August, my mom sent me to Ireland for one month to visit my grandparents. When I came back from Ireland in the end of August, our home was in an uproar, for 2 weeks CIGNA had refused to give my mom all her x-rays telling her they were lost. She had just got them and it showed she had the lung cancer for almost 2 years. My mom had an operation and 20% of her lung was removed. She had a carcinoid tumor. When my mom was in the hospital, the surgeon told my step-dad he was not well either. It ended up that CIGNA refused to release my step-dad’s records for 2 weeks. When they went to an outside doctor, CIGNA had been treating him for asthma; he really has a very advanced case of COPD and had something on his left lung like my mom had.

We went and got the records for all our family. When we saw mine, and we went to an outside doctor, after going outside doctors I know now what the difference is between a real doctor and a CIGNA doctor is, and I hope maybe one day I’ll get to tell you all about that. I had a problem where the bone was being destroyed, where the bone was pushing through the orbit, and the doctor said my eye would have been pushed out. I had my surgery at Cedar-Sinai. 1995 is not much better that 1993 as there seems to be no justice for all these things that CIGNA did to us. We want to get the laws changed so no one will ever have to suffer like this again. CIGNA abuses our family to this very day. They make my mom cry for hours and I hope you will let me tell you all about this too. CIGNA should also know if my parents die, where will I go, and what will happen to my brother and sisters? I’m an American, and when I grow up, I don’t want to live here. I want to move to where people are good and kind. I’ll move to Ireland.

Insofar as Katrina’s chosen title can lead one to think she’s making a general indictment of evil miserly insurance companies (“Negligent Insurance Companies Claim Another Victim”) I think Joe’s questions (posed Dec. 21 8:19PM) are pertinent — and I would for one be curious if Vox Nova might take them up.

If not in this comment-thread, then perhaps a post.

Your questions here are new. And, no, you are not getting to the heart of Katerina’s issue, but the issue with which you are trying to supplant her issue. The “general principles,” likewise, are of your own issue, not that of Katerina.

And, no, I am not “misreading” Katerina. I just spoke with her this evening. Like I said, the issue you bring up is a good one, it’s just misplaced in this thread.

I think you’re misreading both me and Katerina. I won’t speak for her, but as for me, getting at the general principles this conversation is theoretically espousing is precisely the relevant point, not an anecdote. Anecdotes, strictly speaking, give us nothing in terms of developing a consistent philosophical critique of moral theology in the case of “health care,” whatever we mean by the term. Rather, then, my questions indeed get right to the heart of the issue at stake here: what, exactly, is the moral role of an insurance company (assuming it has one and is not a blatant beast, so to speak)? And how does such an incident allow us to move from the anecdotal to a global critique of health care without evidence?

In other words, asking such questions IS getting at the heart of the issue vis-a-vis the anecdote. Unless, of course, getting at the heart of the issues beneath the anecdote through reason isn’t the point of this….

Precisely why I am opposed to government health care.

Katerina was writing about a specific case where death occurred. Don’t distract by speaking generally of insurance claims. While your questions are certainly important, they do not get to the heart of Katerina’s concern of bureaucracy deciding who needs what to live.

Is an insurance company ever morally allowed to decline a claim, regardless of whether or not the contracting parties agreed to the policy limitations? If so, then an insurance company declining a claim can’t automatically bear the blame should someone die while insured by them. If, on the other hand, an insurance company does not have the moral right to deny a claim under any circumstances, then we are really saying that insurance companies as such are inherently immoral entities–which is actually itself an incredibly hasty generalization, as well as a possible calumny, without a more detailed account of who made what decision when based on what evidence.

Further, you said “let’s not miss the big picture here and let’s not play the blame game.” Does the big picture include UCLA’s responsibilities at the administrative and medical levels, the particular individuals at said insurance company that may or may not have had culpability in a moral decision, the reporters relaying the details of the story accurately (or not), the laisons that served as intermediaries between the family and the company’s rep, the writers of the insurance company’s policy, the people of the LA basin that didn’t throw money in a hat for a liver transplant for such a dire case? Or is the “big picture” really just filled with a great amorphous insurance company, the blatant beast cloaked in black? OF COURSE we’re playing the blame game. That’s why this was posted in the first place.

Perhaps because this family paid CIGNA so they could cover their health care costs and they declined their request to cover a liver transplant?

2) Not sure why as a general rule government bureacracies–wide-mouthed siphons of human resources–are deemed to be free of greed, concupiscence, saving money, and sin, while private industry is usually automatically driven merely by profit margins.

3) Not sure why universal medical care is a “right”; not to say that it isn’t a moral good, but if indeed we define it as a right, where are its limits and obligations, and what are the responsibilities and obligations of those seeking it?

4) Everyone dies.