Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

"Booing Santa Claus" was nothing compared to this

If a few snowballs and hurled barbs (OK, and the occasional battery) get the nation worked up over Philly sports fans, then the world should be outraged at one of Philadelphia's biggest and best-known companies, the insurance monolith known as CIGNA:

 Surrounded by supporters, Hilda Sarkisyan marched into Cigna Corp.'s Philadelphia headquarters on a chilly fall day, 10 months after the company refused to pay for a liver transplant for her daughter.

"You guys killed my daughter," the diminutive San Fernando Valley real estate agent declared at the lobby security desk. "I want an apology."

What she got was something quite different.

Cigna employees, looking down into the atrium lobby from a balcony above, began heckling her, she said, with one of them giving her "the finger."

This why when you hear some windbag politician in Washington bemoaning that the public option would destroy private insurance in this country, people say, "So?"

By the way, I read this in the paper where I get some of my favorite Philadelphia stories, including not just this but that the daughter of my then-congressman, Curt Weldon, was lobbying for Russion oil companies. That paper with all the Philly scoops is called the Los Angeles Times.