A federal court in Texas has dismissed the lawsuit filed by twenty-eight patients against the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
The case was originally filed in November 2017 as Torrey vs. IDSA et al. Initially, the case named the IDSA, eight insurance companies, and six doctors who wrote the 2006 IDSA Lyme treatment guidelines. It charged that the IDSA, the authors of the guidelines, and the insurance companies colluded to deny appropriate medical treatment to patients with Lyme disease.
In December 2019, one of the insurance companies, Kaiser Permanente, settled. By November 2020, all eight insurance companies had settled. (The other companies involved were Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Anthem, Inc., Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, Aetna Inc., Cigna Corporation, United Healthcare Services, Inc., and United Healthcare Group Incorporated.)
Since the settlements were confidential, we do not know what the insurance companies agreed to.
By June 2021, the Torrey lawsuit plaintiffs had agreed to drop the case against the six guidelines writers: Raymond J. Dattwyler, John J. Halperin, Eugene D. Shapiro, Leonard H. Sigal, Allen C. Steere, and Gary P. Wormser. (A seventh, Robert Nadelman, died some years ago.)
At that point, the case was only against the IDSA as an organization. In his September 2021 ruling, the judge wrote that the plaintiffs had not made their case that the IDSA had unjustly denied care to Lyme patients. The IDSA had also asked the court to impose legal sanctions against the patients who brought the lawsuit. The court declined to do that.
The plaintiffs say they will appeal…….Join or login below to continue reading.
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