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NAVIGATION PNHP RESOURCES
Posted on December 22, 2008

Our plea: No more Natalines

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By Hilda Sarkisyan
Los Angeles Daily News
Article Launched: 12/22/2008

One year ago, my beautiful daughter Nataline lost her long struggle with leukemia. Our insurance company, Cigna Healthcare, closed the door on us. Now we need to make sure that other families can have the security that our daughter didn’t.

It was one year ago that the California Nurses Association, bloggers from coast to coast, and our Armenian community mounted a massive national protest that forced the hand of our insurance company to reverse their decision to deny a lifesaving liver transplant for our 17-year-old daughter.

Tragically, Nataline slipped into a coma and died two hours after Cigna Healthcare relented and approved the procedure.

Nataline was first diagnosed with leukemia at age 14. She was in remission for only one short year before her relapse. After her sweet 16 birthday, which was a huge celebration with her friends and family, she had several months of chemotherapy. She then developed complications following a bone-marrow transplant from her brother, Bedig, which led to liver failure.

Cigna refused to pay for treatment, citing policy provisions which didn’t cover “services considered experimental, investigational and/or unproven to be safe and/or effective for the patient.”

Four prominent doctors, including the surgical director of the Pediatric Liver Transplant Program at UCLA, wrote to Cigna urging it to reverse its denial. They said that Nataline “currently meets criteria to be listed as Status 1A” for

a transplant. They also challenged Cigna Healthcare’s denial that the company said occurred because their benefit plan “does not cover experimental, investigational and unproven services,” to which the doctors replied, “Nataline’s case is in fact none of the above.”

Why didn’t they listen to the doctors and nurses at her bedside and approve the transplant the week before, when there were two healthy livers that were a match and could have saved my sweet Nataline?

We were told that the cost of a liver transplant and one year of follow-up care was $450,000 in 2007 and UCLA turned down two livers while waiting for approval from Cigna Healthcare. It took a huge outpouring of protest and Cigna Healthcare’s public humiliation to force their hand.

We agree with President-elect Obama, who is talking about the need to bring down spiraling health-care costs, but it won’t happen as long as the insurance industry is minding the till.

Having insurance is not the same as receiving needed care. We need a fundamental change in our health-care system that takes control away from the insurance companies and places it where it belongs - in the hands of the caregivers, the patients and their families.

We have a rare opening, a historic opportunity, and piecemeal solutions that keep the insurance industry open for business will only stoke the fires of financial hardship and unnecessary heartbreak for America’s working families.

My family’s New Year’s wish is to see an end to the suffering caused by insurance industry greed and misguided priorities.

We believe that the only way to guarantee all Americans health care, and assure that another young life is not sacrificed, is through a single-payer system, which is like improved Medicare for all.


Hilda Sarkisyan, of Northridge, and her husband filed a lawsuit against Cigna Healthcare of California last week.