Sebelius: Health Care Waivers Are For Union Pals, Not a Dying Child

Investor's Business Daily ^ | 06/06/2013 | IBD Staff

[IBD editorial writer]

Health Care: Kathleen Sebelius' claim she can't waive a rule to save a 10-year-old's life is rich, given she was last seen doling out ObamaCare waivers like candy to union groups. Welcome to the world of politicized health care.

This week, lawmakers pressed Sebelius, who heads the Health and Human Services Department, to step in to help a Pennsylvania girl suffering cystic fibrosis in urgent need of a lung transplant.

Because she's only 10, Sarah Murnaghan can't access lungs from adult donors, only those from children, of which there are none currently available. [snip]

Whether Sebelius should have intervened in Sarah's care is, of course, the immediate issue. But very troubling is the fact that a government official is in this position at all, able to act as a one-person Death Panel about a girl's health care.

[Diogenesis]

ObamaCARE was designed to give DEATH to any family
not tied to Congress or one of its families or brothels,
AND anyone without a Koran.

[Ann Archy]

Medical care will NOT be given to anyone who doesn’t vote for and give money to Democrats.

[pepsionice]

There are two curious pieces to this story, which you don’t really get much information on.

First, if you took the lung or kidney out of an adult, and transferred it into a nine or ten or twelve year-old kid...is the success rate any less? If it is shown to be less, then we are simply wasting a valuable resource and doing this merely for PR purposes. I’m still waiting for a real medical explanation how we started this rule in the first place.

Second, the health secretary...has not been given any great magical legal powers. This is very obvious now, and I doubt that the President or the Senate desire to give such powers. So what do we have left? Judges? A judge will determine your health situation and what the medical community does or doesn’t do for you? Most of us would question that logic. But we don’t want some health secretary sitting in DC to be the ultimate choice giver either.

[Ann Archy]

Dear IBD....she CAN be given adult lungs because they can cut them down....she just wasn’t on the list to get them because she’s 10 and not 12......GET IT RIGHT!

[Diogenesis]

Please. The problem is that she is WHITE.

I grew up in a relatively color blind America
which is now racist and controlled by a racist DO”J”
(where whites are ignored and “told” to simply
die in Holder-directed and Holder-encouraged
BOW violence).

[Doogle]

First, if you took the lung or kidney out of an adult, and transferred it into a nine or ten or twelve year-old kid

..it used to be....NOW doctors can use an adult organ in the procedure

[exDemMom]

I actually can’t get too worked up over this.

Medically, Sebelius is probably correct; she probably consulted with people who told her that the difference in lung size between a child and adult or adolescent is too great and that such an operation would be unsuccessful.

Morally, I’m looking at this and thinking, these people are fervently hoping and praying for a healthy, vibrant, and alive young person to die so that their sick daughter can get a transplant. I have real problems with the attitude that strangers are no more than walking spare parts factories to be collected when one’s family member becomes ill. I just cannot support that kind of selfishness. Perhaps these people should just accept the fact that it’s their daughter’s time to go.

[liberalh8ter]

[I want the USA back]

Anybody surprised? This is what happens when you give unlimited power to people with no morals and who believe that the end justifies the means.

[Zakeet]

Morally, I’m looking at this and thinking, these people are fervently hoping and praying for a healthy, vibrant, and alive young person to die so that their sick daughter can get a transplant. I have real problems with the attitude that strangers are no more than walking spare parts factories to be collected when one’s family member becomes ill. I just cannot support that kind of selfishness. Perhaps these people should just accept the fact that it’s their daughter’s time to go.

Where did you get that idea?

I believe the parents motives are exactly the opposite.

Their daughter has one chance to live. A stranger somewhere might give her that opportunity by generously donating lungs they no longer need; organs that are critical for the child. A cruel and heartless government has denied the young lady that option. The parents are exercising their only remaining option by appealing the bureaucrats' decision to the court of public opinion. They recognize that the young lady may still die from her disease, but if their plea is heard at least she will have a possibility (albeit small one) at life. And that's all they want. Period.

I have to admit that if I were in their circumstances, I would do exactly the same thing that the child's parents are doing right now.

To impute other sinister motives to the parents' actions is not only unfair, it reflects on your own personal character. And I suggest that in your case, a reassessment of your value system is long overdue.

[Arm_Bears]

Intentionally or not, the judge that ruled in favor of this little girl pulled the Administration’s bacon out of the fire.

A dying 10-year old who was denied treatment by some bureaucrat is not the face the DemonRATS want on Obamacare.

[SendShaqtoIraq]

I don’t think people pray for “a healthy, vibrant, and alive young person to die so that their sick daughter can get a transplant.”

i think they pray that IF a healthy, vibrant, and alive young person” dies that they have signed a donor card and that their organ will match their child.

[silverleaf]

eecch

apparently you do not approve of organ donation, consider it a selfish (not selfless act) and do not know the agony that both sides face in making this decision, nor the number of lives saved by this medical procedure which continues to get better and better results

please note that on your records so that you and your minor family members are never considered as recipients for a tranplant!

[bert]

This is equating apples and oranges

The union waivers are about money

The girl’s waiver is only about life /s

[bert]

The logical extreme and Americans love extreme everything, is the health court. As soon as the bureaucrats deny, the claim is put to the court.

The court decides between life and money

[SoFloFreeper]

Exactly what I said on a thread yesterday.

[SoFloFreeper]

Sibelius is NOT correct by virtue of her position....the decision should be left to the doctors, not a bureaucrat.

[newfreep]

Does anyone remember the date when Sarah correctly stated CommieCare would include death panels?

Anyone?

Buehler?

[PGalt]

BTTT!