On January 20, we are told by "goptvclips," Seattle TV Station King 5 aired a short segment on how children "are being denied specialty treatment by insurance providers on the Washington Health Benefits Network." To be clear, the video's conclusion indicates that "Children's went ahead and treated" some but apparently far from all of the affected children, but, obviously "they can't afford to keep doing it that way."
This story and likely many other stories like it are not national news. As will be seen later, it appears to not even be news at the station which originally presented the story. Situations like this should raise concerns that there is a determined effort on the part of the nation's establishment press to ignore bad-news stories relating to Obamacare. One suspects that there are similar stories waiting to be told all over the country. The video as carried at "goptvclips" and a transcript follow the jump.
Transcript (HT to NB commenter "FurryGuy"; bolds are mine):
Administrators at Seattle Children's today said they predicted this would happen, and it's even worse than they expected — Patients being denied specialty treatment at the hospital by insurance providers on the Washington health benefits exchange.
Children's filed request on behalf of 125 of their patients. Of those, they say they got only 20 responses, eight of which were denials.
Dr. Sandy Melzer says all this comes after reassurances of certain unique specialty cases would still be covered: "Well, some of the patients who were denied are ones who clearly would fall into that unique category. A two-year-old with new significant neck mass that was being evaluated for infection or malignancy, an older child with a chronic severe medical condition requiring multidisciplinary care here, a baby that had a skull abnormality."
Children's went ahead and treated those cases anyway, but Dr. Melzer said they can't afford to keep doing that it way.
To be clear, there may have been an edit of some kind at the 6-second mark of the posted video, and it cuts off before telling us the response of a not-yet identified "spokesperson." But it's hard to imagine how that spokesperson could explain away the horrid evidence King 5 presented. Also note, however, that there is no mention of "The Affordable Care Act" or "Obamacare" in the posted video, an absence which might lead many viewers to believe that this is all the supposedly greedy, incompetent insurance companies' fault.
A relevant Google News search finds results at the Washington Examiner, PJ Media, the Weekly Standard, and the Washington Free Beacon.
King 5's original coverage is not listed at Google News, perhaps because it's no longer online. If it still is online, it's doing a very good job of hiding. I could not find the station's original coverage at King 5's web site despite multiple search attempts. Someone should ask the station where the original story went.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
