Recently, a jury in Oklahoma City ordered insurance giant Aetna to pay $25 million to the family of Orrana Cunningham, an Aetna customer who died of cancer after the company refused to cover radiation therapy. “The jury ruled that Aetna recklessly disregarded its duty to deal fairly and in good faith with Cunningham,” according to a Nov. 10 article by the Associated Press.
The patient was on the state Medicaid insurance and required a so-called prior authorization, or PA, for Ciprofloxacin. Consisting of additional paperwork that physicians are required to fill out before pharmacists can fill prescriptions for certain drugs, PAs boil down to yet another cost-cutting measure implemented by insurers to stand between patients and certain costly drugs.
In July, 2009, the family of Massachusetts teenager Yarushka Rivera went to their local Walgreens to pick up Topomax, an anti-seizure drug that had been keeping her epilepsy in check for years. Rivera had insurance coverage through MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid insurance program for low-income children, and never ran into obstacles obtaining this life-saving medication.
I want to share information about a new program that can help Kitsap County buck the trend by bringing a whole crop of enthusiastic young physicians to our area. It’s called the Northwest Washington Family Medicine Residency Program.
Every child deserves the best possible start in life, and the statistics show that specialist neonatologists practicing at high-volume NICUs are in the best position to provide it. Just because smaller community hospitals that have invested in state-of-the-art equipment can, technically, deliver preemies, doesn’t mean they should.
This week, I am sharing a podcast with David Introcaso. He invited me on the show after reading a piece of mine written in support of the National Walkout on March 14, 2018.
Our Government should be Of the people, By the people and For the people – not Of Target, By Amazon, and For Berkshire Hathaway. Being seen by a midlevel provider at a big box retailer cannot save money. Lawmakers sponsoring H.R 5138 are doing the nation a grave disservice by sponsoring this atrocious legislation.
Why has so little changed in almost 20 years since Columbine? I don’t know. Why has so little changed since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook where 20 children and 6 adults were gunned down in cold blood? I cannot understand. Why has the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida galvanized the nation? Because now, it is our innocent children leading the fight for meaningful change.
Hilary Clinton once said, “there’s no such thing as other people’s children.” Every child is mine. Every child is yours. Every child adds value to the world. By preventing just one child from bringing a gun to school, we could transform the life of not only that child, but also every student in attendance that day, plus every teacher, administrator, parent, grandparent, and community member working to support vulnerable young people.
Mayo has fractured trust by misrepresenting operating losses in Albert Lea to justify hospital closure, Dr. Noseworthy condoned prioritizing patients based on their pocketbooks while third quarter earnings went through the roof, and hospital leadership condescendingly compared driving 23 miles in labor as being equivalent to buying ice cream.