The story of Nataline Sarkisyan is already well known and extremely sad. To be killed by a health care company at the age of 17 is truly horrific. In a nutshell, the number crunchers at Cigna realized that a liver transplant for a young girl would be bad for their bottomline over time, to the tune of $1.3 million dollars or more. So they denied her claiming that a transplant was an experimental treatment, which is complete bullshit. Then when they finally caved to public pressure, it was too late and young Nataline died. Tragically, this is only one of thousands of stories where people die needlessly because their health care provider refuses to treat them.
This is where Presidential politics counts in our national debate. We are going to need a President who will stand up to these companies and not only fight them, but ultimately crush them:
“Are you telling me that we’re gonna sit at a table and negotiate with those people?” asked a visibly angered Edwards, challenging the health care companies. “We’re gonna take their power away and we’re not gonna have this kind of problem again.”
Now that is the type of talk we need to hear, something not being mentioned by Hillary or Obama. Hillary we know is in their back pocket, Obama I am not too sure about but regardless of the money, the people they are pandering to are not the people that care about Nataline and any other young 17 year old girl that can be killed by Cigna, or Blue Cross, or United Health or any of the others out there that care about risk management over human beings.
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