| | Luke, is it absurd? There is a question of facts, like whether the insurance really covered the operation or not. But if it did, would criminal charges be appropriate?
If I prevent you from accessing your own property, which you need in order to save your life, wouldn't that be criminal? If you needs some pills for your heart, and I physically prevented you from getting them, it would be the same as killing you directly. Similarly, if I prevented you from accessing your own money, in order to pay someone to operate on you, I'd be killing you just the same.
If the insurance company took the girl's money, under the contract that they'd pay for specified medical care, they are obligated to pay. If they don't, they're responsible for the outcome. It's not simply theft. It's murder (or some legal variant). That seems to be the argument in this case. So I don't think it's absurd. It depends on the facts.
What would be absurd is to claim that this big company, who happens to be an insurance company, could have saved her life, and so was morally obligated to. In that case, every company and even every person would be guilty of murder. But the argument offered wasn't just that they had the means, but that they were contractually obligated to provide those means.
A few years ago, I saw one of those CSI shows. In it, an insurance company was delaying making a decision on an expensive procedure, in the hopes that it would become unnecessary (i.e., the patient would die). It could be a tempting method, especially given the connection between significant costs and necessary procedures. Just a little delay in the system could save a lot of money. Similar thinking is applied to the social security system. If we delay when we start paying out, we reduce the total liabilities. In both systems, an early death will reduce the overall costs.
I read somewhere the the British national healthcare wanted to add minimum delays to the system. The motivation was different. Some hospitals, despite being part of a nationalized healthcare system, became relatively efficient. It allowed them to see many more patients and reduce the waiting time. That ended up being more costly, as people could go there more often given the efficiency.
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