Letter to the Editor

Insurers should be held accountable

To the editor:

Thirty-seven-year-old Tracy Pierce was diagnosed with liver cancer two years ago. Last May he told a reporter that although he was fully insured, every treatment his doctors prescribed was denied over a 15-month period. He was told the treatments were either not a medical necessity or experimental. As he was dying his insurance company denied him oral morphine prescribed for his pain. After he died, Mrs. Pierce said, "They just wrote him a prescription to die."

Myra Christopher, president of the center for Practical Bioethics, said, "We need to be honest about what's going on here, and that is that some insurance companies are just unethical. ... They treat patients as costs rather than clients."

Mrs. Pierce said, "My mother always told me to get a good job with insurance. Everyone will die, but if you have health insurance, you'll be given every fighting chance. For what? It hasn't done anything."

Life is cheapened after 33 years of the culture of death. The chief executives of such companies should be brought up on fraud and manslaughter charges for accepting payments and not honoring their commitments. Legislators need to protect the public from this kind of insurance fraud.

CHRISTINE E. STEPHENS, Cape Girardeau