Posted on 10/06/2010 12:39:58 PM PDT by TigerClaws
Arizona's Medicaid agency will no longer cover some non-experimental organ transplants for its adult members, including liver transplants for patients with Hepatitis C, a move blasted as "a death sentence" by one patient advocacy group.
... also is eliminating most dental care for adults as well as coverage of podiatrist services; insulin pumps; percussive vests; bone-anchored hearing aids; cochlear implants; orthotics; gastric bypass surgery; certain durable medical equipment; "well" medical checkups; some non-emergency medical transportation; microprocessor-controlled lower limbs and joints; and it is limiting outpatient physical therapy to 15 visits per contract year.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Obama = McCain’s friend. McCain’s policies and elite are iling up the body count in AZ. Nice job.
Good Heavens! There really, really are death panels.
Ping
Look for massive Medicaid and Medicare cuts as Obamacare kicks in.
The four great lies:
You can keep your health plan if you like it.
Health care costs will be lower for everybody.
There will be no rationing.
There are no death panels.
And so it begins.
I’m just wondering if anybody here has a rational defense of the policy of putting one of the highly limited supply of livers available for transplant into someone with Hep-C, which will quickly destroy the new liver.
As opposed to using the same liver to extend the life of an otherwise healthy person for a much longer period.
If we had an unlimited supply of organs available for transplant, the situation would be different. But we don’t. Doesn’t it make sense to use the limited supply where it will do the most good?
ObamaCare = DeathCare = Holocaust II
Believe it and thank Hussein, Pelosi and Reid for an American genocide.
Health care: affordability, accessibility, quality.
Pick any two.
Can you say Death Panels now?
bump
I’m glad you’re not sitting on the death panel. Who’s to say which person would do the best with a liver transplant? You know, they keep saying that a reliable cure is getting close. A liver transplant now might allow someone to live long enough to receive a real cure (as opposed to the torture that now passes for “treatment”).
And please note—they are also denying a lot of other treatments for a lot of other conditions, if you read the whole story. A lot of people will be hurt by this.
Since McCain is both aged and decrepit, speculation that if he kicks the bucket, would Jan Brewer appoint J.D. or Sheriff Joe?
The idea of the Sheriff becoming a US senator would certainly give many Democrats high pressure embolism strokes. It would be worth it for the entertainment value alone.
When you are not paying for it out of your own pocket, the demand for medical care is practically infinite. The recipients of Medicaid pay nothing — where should the line be drawn?
Arizona could devote a huge part of state revenue to these people if there are no limits.
I agree. I just disagree with the fantasies of those who think there are no hard choices to make when deciding who will receive the benefit of extremely scarce resources.
At present, we don’t have the choice of providing accessibility to organ transplants to all who need them, regardless of the amount of money we are willing to spend.
Doctors make decisions as to treatment based on likely prognosis all the time.
My point is not that patient A, Hep-C positive, should be denied a liver transplant. It's whether he should receive the liver that 9 other people also need, all of whom have a better likelihood of the transplant being successful.
I thought this was a very large factor in the difference between liberals and conservatives. We recognize there are no solutions, only tradeoffs, whereas liberals insist there are no hard choices that have to be made. They believe we can have zero pollution, total sexual freedom, a booming economy and social justice all at the same time, without any negative side effects.
If George gets the liver, Sally won't. We don't have the choice of giving a liver to each of them, we only have one liver.
From what you wrote, I get the impression that you think HCV is obtained only from hedonistic practices. I assure you, that is not the case. Or perhaps I misunderstood.
In any event, I maintain that if they limit liver transplants to only non-HCV positive people, that doesn’t guarantee that the they will thrive any more than those with HCV. There are so many factors.
I am not liberal in my views, but staunchly stand up for the right to life. Government or “death panels” playing God never ends well—see Germany for one example.
My belief that HCV-positive people are less appropriate candidates for liver transplant has nothing to do with whether I approve of their lifestyle. Solely with the greatly decreased chance that the transplant is likely to be fully successful.
I am perfectly well aware that many people with HCV, and for that matter HIV, acquired them in perfectly innocent ways. My argument for taking this disease status into account is based on medical issues, not moral ones.
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