An expose of bad businesses and their unethical practices

In Glendale, CA there is a family grieving the loss of their daughter. Nataline Sarkisyan died Thursday night in Los Angeles. Nataline had been a leukemia patient. Her brother had donated bone marrow to get her past that life-threatening disease. However, a complication from that surgery left Nataline’s liver severely damaged. Doctors determined that she desperately needed a liver transplant on December 11.

Her health insurer, Cigna Healthcare, immediately denied permission for the transplant. Protests at Cigna’s offices and a wave of national support for Nataline finally led Cigna to grant permission for the operation to proceed. However, it was too late. The patient’s system was too compromised by the time the assent was granted, and Nataline died.

We wrote a column last week about the ethics of a profit motive in health care. This case underlines what we said in that column. Insurance companies have no place in decisions involving life and death, especially companies that are willing to sentence a person to death by denying treatment deemed necessary by the doctors in a case. I doubt that the parents will get far in pursuing criminal charges against Cigna. However that turns out, the ethics of corporate greed led directly to this death. Bad Business, indeed.