xx

this photo op.

I won't defend Cigna. They refused the transplant as "experimental." It was the first widely-publicized (via blogs) of many similar cases in which insurers refused payment for medical treatment the public regards as state-of-the-art, but stockholders' greed -- and if you have a 401K you're a stockholder in one of these outfits, unless YOU aggressively manage your portfolio to avoid it -- mandated not spending the money to help this girl live.

I won't defend the CEO. I don't really understand why anybody needs to make a $45 million bonus (unless maybe it's somebody who, out of a blue clear sky, creates world peace that starts now, so we can stop with the insanity of spending trillions a year on wars) -- but then I can't quite figure out why a banker needs to make stratospheric money and a teacher or a highway patrolman or a public health nurse needs to be on food stamps.

Yes, I am declaring that it's all fucked up. I'm also saying that this particular "protest" didn't bring Nataline Sarkisyan back from the dead, and that's really the only thing that would make her mother feel better. If you listened to Keith Olbermann the other night he explained in clear and concise language exactly how this kind of decision gets made in the corporate offices.

Bottom line? INSURANCE IS A RACKET.

Bear in mind this is not limited to "health care" insurance, mmmmkay?

The California Nurses Association is, so far as I can tell from a cursory examination, not a bad outfit. Helping the Sarkisyans stage this confrontation with a greedy bastard at the top of an insurance corporation's food chain was a good stunt. But it didn't work out. Oh, sure, the refusal of the cowardly CEO to appear is good pub for the CNA.

But ultimately, what changed because of this?

Nothing.