I came across this story from just before Christmas about a family in Northridge, California, who is suing CIGNA. The family wants also to charge the company with murder because the insurer initially refused to pay for a liver transplant for their 17-year-old daughter, who had leukemia. The girl had gone into a vegetative state after her liver failed due to complications from a bone marrow transplant.

CIGNA said no to the transplant because it is experimental. Four doctors from the UCLA Medical Center ,where she was being treated, wrote the company on December 11 to say that the six-month survival rate has been about 65 percent for similar patients. A liver was available on December 14, but the family "could not afford" the $75,000 down payment the hospital demanded for patients without insurance coverage. CIGNA reversed course on December 20, hours before the family and hospital pulled life support. The daughter died an hour later.

The family blame the for-profit insurance company, but not the state-run hospital that demanded a $75,000 down-payment? And what about the publicity-hungry lawyer who represented the family for a fee and did not get a fax from the insurance company to the family until after they removed her from life support? 

This blog post by a med student in Texas provides more horrific details and worthwhile commentary.