The Uncomfortable Truth

By now, we have all heard about the tragic case of Nataline Sarkisyan.
In case you haven’t, she is the young lady that died recently after her father’s insurance company refused to pay for a liver transplant.
The company, CIGNA, said the transplant was experimental. After a flurry of protests, the company relented, but by then it was too late, and Nataline died.
Enter Mark Geragos. The fame-seeking attorney of Michael Jackson has filed suit against CIGNA, and has tried to get the District Attorney to file manslaughter charges against them.
It is one thing to file a suit for a breach of contract, but the way this story—and all stories similar to this one--is being portrayed, it’s as if CIGNA denied health care to this young woman.
Let’s be clear here: CIGNA is an insurance company—they do not provide health care. Sometimes—if we are lucky—insurance companies pay for health care.
Again, the way these stories are often presented, it’s easy to forget that.
We shouldn’t.
The hospital denied health care to Nataline. For them, money was more precious than her life.
That is the problem with health care.
There is no incentive to control profits. Of course not. We live in a capitalist society. However, that doesn’t mean that “socialized” medicine would be any less expensive—in this country anyway.
What would be so wrong with non-profit medicine?
I have never had a doctor tell me he or she was in it for the money. I have never heard a nurse say that either. It seems though, that everyone else associated with the field is.
Have you ever thought about that?
Have you ever pondered the idea of making millions, nay, billions off the pain and suffering of others?
Think about it, if pain and suffering are profitable, then where is the incentive to reduce either?
In fact, there is a strong incentive to create new diseases for which expensive new medicines can be marketed.
I’m just spitballing here, but if diabetes is a 350 million-dollar-a-year business, could that be why “Big Pharma” and their minions in Congress do nothing to outlaw the diabetes-causing high fructose corn syrup?
Are profits the reason the AMA opposes using marijuana as medicine? This position is 180 degrees from where they stood when it was outlawed in the first place. A ton of money would not be made if this easy-to-grow medicine were allowed to compete on a level playing field. I studied this ten years ago. For example, the cost of an anti-nausea regimen was 1,800 dollars a month versus zero dollars for homegrown medicine.
We will never solve the “health care crisis” in America until we change the paradigm.
When we, as a society, decide that human life is more precious than money, we will have true health care reform.