Cigna denied a cancer patient's lung transplant. Now the insurer says it was an 'error.' [View all]

[xocetaceans]

Cigna denied a cancer patient's lung transplant. Now the insurer says it was an 'error.'

Ken Alltucker
USA TODAY
Published 4:00 p.m. ET Nov. 24, 2023 | Updated: 11:02 a.m. ET Nov. 26, 2023


A large health insurance company said it made an error when it denied coverage this week to a 47-year-old woman as she prepared to undergo a double-lung transplant to treat her lung cancer.

The woman, Carole Taylor, was summoned to Vanderbilt University Medical Center Tuesday when the hospital found a donor match for a double lung transplant. As the transplant team prepared her for the procedure, she was informed the insurance company, Cigna Healthcare, had denied the transplant.

Instead of getting a pair of donor lungs, Taylor was sent home and deactivated from the transplant waitlist.

But following a public outcry on the social media site X and Taylor's own words describing the ordeal on Substack, Cigna Healthcare said the insurer now will cover the transplant.

. . .

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2023/11/24/cigna-denies-vanderbilt-lung-transplant-for-cancer-patient/71678533007/

However, it should be noted that this sort of situation seems to have occurred before:

Health Insurer to Be Charged With Teen's Murder
Calif. family says it will sue medical insurer delaying a lifesaving surgery.

By ABC News
December 21, 2007, 8:29 AM

Dec. 21, 2007--The family of a California teenager who died awaiting a liver transplant said they would sue the insurer whom they blame for their daughter's death.

...

Cigna appears to have reversed its decision to deny the transplant after about 150 teenagers and nurses protested outside its Glendale office Thursday. "Protestors are here, the war is here," Hilda Sarkisyan, the girl's mother, told the group hours before her daughter's death. "We have a war here."

The Sarkisyan family claims that Cigna first agreed to the liver transplant surgery and had secured a match weeks ago. After the teen, who was battling leukemia, received a bone marrow transplant from her brother, however, she suffered a lung infection, and the insurer backed away from what it felt had become too risky a procedure.

"They're the ones who caused this. They're the one that told us to go there, and they would pay for the transplant," Hilda Sarkisyan said.

...

Further information on the outcome of that attempt to address the seemingly related 2007 case in court is at this LA Times link:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-oct-08-fi-cigna8-story.html

Note: Earlier, I had posted this mistakenly in LBN, so my apologies to those who saw it there. I was not careful with the original sourcing--MSN posted it today in accordance with its "updated" timestamp, but the story was originally published on 24 Nov 2023.


My thoughts are that simply that insurance companies harboring a profit motive should not be part of healthcare. Like education, healthcare should be available for the good of the public individually and society generally.