Disease, blame, and corporate sociopathy

[womzilla]

Sarah Robinson of Orcinus has been suffering from Lyme Disease mistreatment for a quarter-century. She tells the story here.

Why would ostensibly caring doctors be so resistant to accepting new and better data? As always, follow the money. The [Infectious Disease Society of America]'s minimalist view of Lyme is greatly favored by insurance companies, who really don't want to be on the hook for expensive testing or more than a month of treatment..... For their part, IDSA's Lyme group has held up their end of the deal so reliably that last May, they became the first medical standards board in the history of American medicine to be successfully sued (by the attorney general of Connecticut, no less) for corruption.

There's a bit in Nick Pileggi's book Wise Guy that didn't make it into the film adaptation, Goodfellas. A turning point of Henry Hill's life was his participation in the Lufthansa heist in late 1978. The heist was masterminded by Hill's friend and associate Jimmy "The Gent" Burke (the basis for the film's Jimmy Conway, played by Robert De Niro). After the heist, Burke ended up holding all the money, and, basically, everyone who tried to get their share ended up dead instead. Hill's explanation? For Jimmy Burke, if there was a choice between giving you a quarter million dollars or a bullet in the head, it was no choice at all.

Insurance companies are the Jimmy Burkes of the corporate world. They will literally withhold medical treatment from a dying baby if they think they can get away with it. And people wonder why I support single-payer.

Highlighted by bruceb.

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

withhold medical treatment from a dying baby? They're in bed with their buddies the pharmaceutical companies, who will do their level best to make sure that that dying baby's available treatments a) don't work, and b) cost more than the parents' home.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

The pharmaceutical companies don't want treatments to not work--if the patient dies, they don't make any more money. Their ideal is a treatment which works if and only if the patient keeps taking it until the patent runs out.