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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Why do fetophiles oppose universal health care?
Posted by Jill | 5:35 AM
There's a strong overlap between the fetophiles screaming about the lives of babies and the teabaggers standing on street corners screaming about "Obamacare". Now, it's well known that I do NOT favor an insurance system that requires everyone to buy insurance from the shakedown artists known as insurance companies whose business model is to charge extortionate premiums and deny claims as often as possible. So I'm not defending the Senate bill that Rahm Emanuel wants the House to pass. But it's hard to argue for the status quo either (which is what the teabaggers are doing, since they offer no alternatives), when the status quo is this:
One of the worst abuses of private insurance companies is the practice of using spurious reasons to deny claims for medical treatments, which are often necessary for saving patients’ lives.

Kyler Van Nocker’s story shows that even 5-year-old kids are not exempt from this insurance company abuse. Van Nocker has neuroblastoma, which is a very rare form of childhood cancer that targets the nervous system and creates tumors throughout the body.

Due to successful treatment in 2007, Van Nocker’s cancer went into remission, giving him 12 months of pain-free life. Unfortunately, in Sept. 2008, the cancer returned, and Van Nocker was once again in need of treatment. Unfortunately, his health insurer, HealthAmerica, refused to pay for one form of treatment doctors believe could save his life (MIBG treatment) because they consider it “investigational/experimental” since it has yet to be approved by the FDA.


Yet in April 2008, the insurer approved cheaper treatment for Van Nocker that was also “experimental,” prompting Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky to ask, “So why, pray tell, is HealthAmerica playing the ‘experimental therapy’ card in the case of the MIBG treatment Kyler now needs? Gee, money couldn’t have anything to do with the decision, could it?”


HealthAmerica is a privately-owned company, so the compensation of its CEO, Robert Dawson, is unavailable.

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1 Comments:
Anonymous mandt said...
It's the diaper lobby!
2/11/10, 5:36 PM  
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