GIRL DIES HOURS AFTER INSURANCE COMPANY APPROVES TRANSPLANT

City News Service, CA
December 20, 2007 Thursday 10:29 PM PST

A 17-year-old leukemia patient from Northridge died today at Mattel
Children’s Hospital at UCLA, hours after her insurance company bowed
to a nationwide protest and reversed its earlier denial of a liver
transplant.

The parents of Nataline Sarkisyan removed her from life support
"because her condition was hopeless," family friend Steve Artinian
told Fox11.

"Now we have to start the healing process to try to figure out what
happened and why it happened," Artinian said.

Nataline had been in a vegetative state for three weeks, her mother
Hilda Sarkisyan told the Daily News.

CIGNA initially declined to pay for the transplant for Nataline
because her plan did not cover "experimental, investigational and
unproven services,’ her doctors said.

The denial prompted a nationwide series of protests, including a
rally outside CIGNA’s Glendale offices attended by a crowd estimated
by organizers at 150. Hundreds of telephone callers also clogged
lines at CIGNA offices around the nation today on Nataline’s behalf,
organizers said.

About 15 minutes into the rally, it was announced that CIGNA would
make an exception to its rules and approve the transplant.

"This is an incredible turnaround generated by a massive outpouring
around the country that proves that an engaged public can make a
difference and achieve results," Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director
of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing
Committee, one of the rally’s organizers, said before Nataline’s death.

"CIGNA had to back down in the face of a mobilized network of
patient advocates and health care activists who would not take no
for an answer."

The Armenian National Committee and Eve Gittleson, a blogger on the
Web site Daily Kos, also help organize the protests.

Nataline was diagnosed with leukemia at age 14. After two years of
treatment the cancer went into remission but came back this summer,
Sarkisyan told the Daily News.

When doctors said Nataline could use a bone-marrow transplant,
the Sarkisyans discovered that her only sibling, Bedig, 21, was a
match, and he donated his bone marrow the day before Thanksgiving,
the newspaper reported.

However, Nataline developed a complication from the bone-marrow
transplant and, because her liver was failing, doctors recommended a
transplant, according to an appeal letter sent to CIGNA earlier this
month, the Daily News reported.

The Sarkisyans filed an appeal with the California Department of
Insurance, which sent a letter this week saying it needed more
information.