Stacy Ritter, Mother of 2 Sick Kids: Cigna's Claims about Provided Coverage

Run time: 04:20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnhQGZmnKoE   Posted on YouTube: January 26, 2010 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: January 27, 2010 By DU Member: democracy1st Views on DU: 647

 
Stacy Ritter, Mother of 2 Sick Kids: Cigna's Claims about Provided Coverage "A Bold-faced Lie"

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Meet Stacie Ritter. She’s a hardworking mother of twins who lives in Pennsylvania.

Her daughters, now 11, were diagnosed with leukemia when they were four. They both needed stem cell transplants and other cancer treatments. The twins survived, but the glands controlling their growth were damaged beyond repair from the treatment. To continue growing, they needed doctor-recommended growth-hormone injections regularly.

Stacie’s husband’s company switched to CIGNA health insurance, and CIGNA refused to cover the hormone shots. Each time Stacie takes her daughters to the doctor for the shots, it costs her $440. Between the cancer treatment and the denied care, Stacie and her husband had to file for bankruptcy.

Meet Ed Hanway. He’s the "hardworking" CEO of CIGNA – a leading health insurance company.

Last year, Hanway made $12.2 million. That’s $5,883 an hour, enough to cover 12 of the treatments Stacie’s daughters need every hour. He has $28 million in stock options. He owns a beach house in New Jersey worth $13 million, one of many mansions he possesses.

Hanway runs CIGNA, which made $7 billion dollars in the last eight years . How does CIGNA make money? By denying claims from people like Stacie. You see, if they had to pay for treatment like what Stacie’s daughters need, they couldn’t make anywhere close to $7 billion dollars.

This isn’t right.


It isn’t right that Hanway can make more money than the average American family every hour, and Stacie has to go bankrupt trying to care for her daughters. And it isn’t right that a company in America can base their business off of hurting and bankrupting other people, denying them needed health care.

Stacie isn’t taking this sitting down.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8617

No one (no corporation) should make a profit from someone else's illness. And no one (or corporation) should EXPECT to make a profit from someone's illness. (Which is why they refuse coverage for such treatments.)
Health care is a RIGHT. Period. Every other functioning "western" democracy in the world has acknowledged this. If we don't fix this awful nonsense we will (if we haven't already) lose every shred of credibility we have as a modern nation.

I apologize for the oratory. But this makes my ears smoke.

How did health insurance reform go so "off the tracks"??? It's hard to believe that there are so many Americans with absolutely NO empathy. I know it's terrible, but sometimes I wish bad things would happen to these bad people.

Well . . . or not, as the case above illustrates. Once we're all in the hands of these fucking sharks, we're all pretty much fucked.

It becomes of a question of accepting it or fighting for our very lives.

Health care "management" for profit is an obscenity. How it can be allowed to exist in this Nation is unconscionable to me.

I used to work for that outfit... what a horrible bunch of policies they had.