The Actual Death Panels
Remember in 2009 during the writing of the ACA when Sarah Palin spun the big lie about “death panels” where faceless bureaucrats would arbitrarily deny coverage to innocent patients? I certainly do. During late 2009, this gigantic lie took on a life of its own, scaring the crap out of people using a completely baseless charge about healthcare under the new act. Even today some media circles still use that lie to oppose people getting medical insurance.
The tragedy of the death panel lies is that death panels do actually exist and have for decades since Nixon converted the national healthcare system from a care system to a for-profit system when he signed the 1973 act forming HMOs. Since then, actual panels of nurses and doctors are flooded on a daily basis with life and death decisions for their customers, insurance policy holders. These actual death panels often make the wrong decision, wrecking millions of families’ financial wellbeing and accelerating the deaths of those with deadly diseases.
In a small victory against the insurance industry monopoly, Aetna has just been ordered to pay the family of Orrana Cunningham $25.5 million for “recklessly” disregarding its duty to deal fairly and in good faith when the Aetna death panel denied coverage for her treatment. She had cancer and the proton beam treatment which could have saved her (and was approved by Medicare) was denied for financial reasons. The court also ruled that the doctors making these decisions were unqualified and overworked, noting that one doctor had stated that he was expected to review over 80 cases per day, which is impossible for a doctor to properly review cases like these.
Aetna hasn’t decided whether it will appeal the judgement, but a spokesman said the company has “learned some things” during the course of this case. I’ll bet.
NO solution to healthcare works unless it is a nationalized healthcare for all system. Every developed country on the planet, with the notable exception of the United States, has figured out this problem. It’s time we do, too.
My late husband was on Medicare. We always thought that if he were a private patient with deep pockets =he would’ve received much more immediate care which could have not only lengthened his life but possibly cure him as well. Why he had to wait in line for various treatments was always a mystery to us. There certainly were plenty of hospitals around with plenty of treatment equipment. He finally did a John McCain and called it quits when he weighed about 95 pounds. The cancer had eaten him alive.
1A friend of mine’s grandson is going through this right now. He was diagnosed with cancer at 10 months. Humana is quibbling on whether his treatment is in or out of network.
2@ Maggie,
I am so sorry that you and your beloved husband were treated that way. I felt the same way about Mr. McCain, knowing he had the finest care, provided by the US government and our tax dollars. All of us who don’t have deep pockets should get the same quality of care he got.
Last year my sister was in the hospital for a serious kidney issue during which she became very weak and need to go to a rehab center to get strong enough to go home. Medicare said it would not authorize funding for her to go there. The doctor at the hospital would not release my sister to go home as she was too weak. While she was in the hospital, she did not receive the physical therapy she needed.We appealed at least three times. She was there for a month when she could have been in rehab getting physical therapy. I found out during that time that the doctor at Medicare (located in CA) who made this decision was brought up on charges and fired. Medicare finally relented and my sis recovered in rehab. But this ordeal was totally unnecessary and I’m quite sure that Medicare wasted money by not giving my sis the appropriate care she needed.
3Medicare should be Aetna in CA.
4oops…Sis says it was Medicare.
5H M O = Hand the Money Over
6Health care isn’t arbitrary which is one of the main reasons affordable universal healthcare cannot move forward with insurance companies attached to it like barnacles to a hull. In fairness, we could offer them a consolation prize – the insurance pool for the gun humpers attached to a bill for gun safety.
7Sarah Palin and those who voted against the ACA were a death panel. They didn’t deny coverage on an individual basis, why take the time and effort? They made it possible to efficiently kill off patients en masse, by creating a vast class of uninsured and underinsured, for their campaign donors, the insurance company overlords.
8Jane & PKM #7
I’d like to see insurance companies muzzled, leashed and made into non-profit organizations in order to do business.
9“I don’t want the government making decisions about my health care!”
Damn fools don’t realize that big insurance companies are doing it now, and doing a lousy, scrimping, and cruel job of it too often.
10Papa @9, that’s a good goal. Baby steps. First let’s sic them on the gun humpers, so they can pay for their own self-inflicted wounds and other mayhem they cause. Then, we corral the insurance agencies (homeowner, fire damage, water damage and the rest of the vultures) with consumer protection legislation and “gently” phase them into being the non-profit organizations you recommend.
Whereas health care, education, prisons and other general “community” services should be kept far away from private profiteering paws.
11@Papa: YES. Think of all the patients’ policies who went toward paying CEO salaries, like the pre-ACA CEO of Cigna who took home $50 million a year over a 5-year period, and that doesn’t count the upper tiers of executives in each company, or dividends paid to stockholders. I’d like to know the percentages of company income paid to executives plus all other administrative costs for all the major insurance companies over the past 20 years or so.
Sure, every company needs to make a profit, but when to profits become so unreasonable that they’re intolerable, not to mention sometimes criminal.
12@Teh Gerg: The ACA requires health insurance companies to pay 80% of the premiums received as claims, only 20% can go to “overhead”; and the really big ones have to pay out 85% on claims. This is still ridiculous, Medicare – you know, that terrible inefficient government run health insurance program /s – uses a massive 2% of premiums received for “overhead”. Of course, the head of CMMS (the Medicare agency) gets paid at a SES level i.e., somewhere between $150K and $250K, not millions a year.
13It is interesting to me that in politics and in the administration of society generally, the most humane course of action is so often the most practical in the long run.
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