MONDAY DEC 24, 2007 (Foodconsumer.org) -- The death of a 17-year-old girl who was refused funds for her liver transplant by Cigna HealthCare has highlighted the inadequacy of the health insurance system in the country. Arguably the California teen Nataline Sarkisyan would probably have died even if her request for the transplant was sanctioned as she was battling leukemia.

However, her family lawyer Mark Geragos said doctors believed the transplant would have helped and it is their opinion that matters. He accused Cigna HealthCare of reversing its decision to allow for the liver transplant only after they knew the teenager was close to death and was in fact not able to accept the procedure.

For the last fortnight Nataline had been on the liver transplant list. Her condition was listed critical and slipped so much and so fast that she would not have tolerated the procedure at a late stage.  At a point, the parents had to pull off life support letting their daughter to die.   The whole situation came to pass after the teenager received a bone marrow transplant from her brother last month.

Nataline developed liver failure as a result of that procedure and doctors opined she needed a liver transplant urgently. Her family resorted to Cigna for funding the transplant, but the insurer rejected their application arguing it was too experimental.

The determined parents then enlisted four doctors to lecture the insurer that the procedure would give Nataline a 65 percent chance of six months of survival as it did to other patients in a similar condition. Meanwhile, a strong protest by medical workers and other supporters outside the headquarters of Cigna in Los Angeles finally convinced the insurer to agree to pay for the procedure.

However, the decision to reverse its earlier refusal, which came on Thursday, was too late to save Nataline. Mark Geragos has said the family will press murder and manslaughter charges against the insurer.

"I believe, the corporation knew, powers that be knew, that at that point approving the liver transplant was a 'gimme' because her condition deteriorated to the point where she couldn't receive the liver…she didn't have any chance of either, one, getting a liver or, number two, actually being able to receive it," he alleged.

But experts opine that Cigna may have been in the right because using a liver transplant in a cancer patient is of questionable use. The Los Angeles Times reported that of the 1,107 patients under age 18 who underwent a liver transplant from 2004 to 2006, 92 percent survived for 12 months or more.

However, the caveat is that not all of them were as sick as Nataline. The case only highlights the health insurance debate that is building up in America. It is indeed a classic case of corporate constraints against qualified medical opinion.

Editor’s note:  

It’s always sad to hear someone’s death.  God bless Nataline and her family in the difficult time.  

Although we wish the insurance issuer could grant the funding earlier, they in our opinion may not have committed any wrong doings in its decision.   Corporations exist to make their profit and whenever they can they would refuse to pay anything.   That is the business rule.  

If moral standards should be considered, the doctors and hospitals should be the first to blame.   They knew Nataline’s risk of death more than any other people or organizations, but they did not do anything to save her life unless they received the money!   What they were waiting for is money.   Their act did not essentially differ from that of the insurance issuer.   Why couldn’t the doctors do the procedure before the family located the fund?