May 28, 2008
The Inhumanity of Humana
The influential philosopher Hannah Arendt first used the phrase “the banality of evil” in her work exploring the reasons for the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis. In the simplest sense, Arendt meant that the principle architects of genocide and atrocity often did not think of their actions as immoral – they were simply carrying out orders and lacked (or chose to ignore) the ability to see what their actions meant from the perspective of the people targeted for destruction.
Over the years, Arendt’s formulation has been used in different contexts to explore the reasons for actions that are immoral and evil, but less so than the crimes of the Nazi regime. However, the basic formulation stands – people doing things that are clearly evil but just considering it to be their job.
Ruth Sheehan in her column in today’s News and Observer describes a modern-day situation subject to analysis by any student of Arendt. Stephanie Phillippi has taken care of her husband Doug, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease, at home for years. His drugs have always been paid for by the Medicaid program after the family’s medical expenses drove their income down for years to levels most of us couldn’t deal with. Then, along came President Bush, Congressional Republicans, and the new Medicare drug program that stuck Doug in a private Medicare drug plan run by Humana for his drugs.
Supposedly Doug could continue just as before, but – read about it in Ruth’s excellent piece – at the start of the year Humana illegally stopped paying for Doug’s medications. Stephanie has soldiered on, scraped up money, gotten help wherever she could, but is at the end of her rope. Doug needs these drugs to live, and Stephanie can’t pay for them – it’s as simple as that. This is not a gray area. Doug qualifies for these drugs to be paid for, Stephanie has proved it to Humana again and again, but they are still denying the drugs, and, inevitably, life, to a family that deserves help from our community and not a cold shoulder from a multibillion dollar corporation and its employees.
I’ve personally talked to these ordinary people at Humana and explained the dire situation to them again and again. So has our Justice Center expert litigator and colleague Jack Holtzman. Not one of them has taken responsibility and gotten this situation fixed. Not one of them seems to be able to put themselves in the place of the Phillippi family. Not one of them sees that they are doing anything wrong. Even the repeated, lengthy, and increasingly outraged intervention of Congressman David Price and his fantastic staff has yet to bear fruit – although it’s there I hold out the most hope.
Arendt’s teachings place a special responsibility upon us as human beings to recognize and combat evil not only in its most obvious and terrifying manifestations, but in the ordinary actions of those who seem blind to the far-reaching consequences of the decisions they make. Humana, its employees' actions and the crazy Medicare privatization scheme that has spawned these serious consequences for one North Carolina family certainly rise to this standard.
Search
Previous Posts
- New Democracy NC report shows risks of Census undercount
- Governor Perdue implements preferred drug list in NC Medicaid
- Lunch links
- Price will vote “Yes”
view full archive » subscribe to feed
Web Links
- BlueNC
- Capital Beat (Greensboro News-Record)
- Capital Commentary (Wilmington Star News)
- Capital Letters (Asheville Citizen-Times)
- Deathwatch (Death penalty updates)
- Equality NC blog
- Exile on Jones Street
- Isaac Hunter’s Tavern (WUNC Radio)
- Leftyblogs
- Let’s Talk Politics (Hickory Daily Record)
- NC Conservation Network Blog
- North Carolina Economics
- Orange Politics
- Public Policy Polling
- Say Ahhh!
- Stop NCAR (Realtor’s Assn. watchdog)
- The Arc of North Carolina Policy Blog
- The People’s Business (Fayetteville Observer)
- This Old State (Charlotte Observer)
- Triangulator (Independent Weekly)
- Under the Dome (News & Observer)
- Watauga Watch
2 Comments Add yours »
[...] week I described the outrageous and immoral behavior of the Humana health insurance company towards Doug and [...]
What a well-written and excellent piece this was! The destructive force of chosen or unconscious human “blind spots” was a major topic at the International Psychoanalytic Conference in Berlin, Germany, this last summer. Too many of us choose not to see that which we need to act upon. Thanks for your hard work and I was so glad to hear that the combined efforts of so many helped this terrible situation.