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So what is your point? Government owes everyone a
transplant? Or everyone is en led to a transplant?
And if so, are you ready to cut back on other social programs to pay for these transplants or just essential
services.
2nd person denied Ariz. transplant coverage dies
PHOENIX – A second person denied transplant coverage by Arizona under a state budget cut has died, with this death "most likely" resulting from the coverage reduction, a hospital spokeswoman said Wednesday.
University Medical Center spokeswoman Jo Marie Gellerman said the patient died Dec. 28 at another medical facility after earlier being removed from UMC's list for a liver transplant needed because of hepa is C.
Gellerman cited medical privacy requirements in declining to release any information about the patient.
Arizona reduced Medicaid coverage for transplants on Oct. 1 under cuts included to help close a shortfall in the state budget enacted last spring.
Officials at the Tucson, Ariz., hospital said the patient's death "most likely" resulted from Arizona's scaling back coverage for transplants, she said.
It's impossible to say with 100 percent certainty whether the patient would have died anyway, Gellerman said, "but we do know that his condition has gotten more severe since he was taken off the list."
The patient's worsening condition would have elevated his place on the list, she added.
A Phoenix-area man, Mark Price, died Nov. 28 of complications from preparation for a bone-marrow transplant that was to be privately funded. That funding was provided anonymously after The Associated Press and other media outlets reported that he was notified of two possible donors on Oct. 1, the same day the coverage was reduced.
The second person's death was reported by KOLD-TV in Tucson and the Arizona Guardian.
Democrats and other critics have slammed Republican Gov. Jan Brewer and the Republican-led Legislature for the transplant coverage reduction, and incoming Senate Minority Leader David Schapira called on them to restore the approximately $1.4 million of funding.
"Failure to restore this funding is a death sentence for people who have committed no crimes," he said.
Contacted for comment on the latest death, Brewer spokeswoman Paul Senseman said the governor's office didn't have confirmation that the person was enrolled in the state Medicaid program, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.
Brewer earlier Wednesday renewed her defense of the transplant coverage reduction but expressed a willingness to have it reviewed.
"It's something that probably needs to be discussed," Brewer said. "Eveybody is concerned about it, as I am. The bottom line is ... that was one of those areas that we could cut and we moved forward on that."
Brewer commented when asked by a reporter about a legislative committee chairman's intention to review the transplant cutbacks during a future budget hearing.
Brewer and Republican lawmakers want to drop approximately 250,000 people from AHCCCS enrollment because of the state's continuing budget troubles and the impending loss of federal stimulus funding that has propped up spending on the Medicaid program.
Arizona faces a projected $1.4 billion shortfall in its next state budget.
Brewer has said she will ask President Barack Obama's administration for a waiver permitting the enrollment reduction. The federal health care overhaul otherwise bars the enrollment reduction.
Tough talk from the GOP during the election season regarding funding cuts and making govt smaller .... I guess it's difficult to defend your policies when they start to cost lives...
So what is your point? Government owes everyone a
transplant? Or everyone is en led to a transplant?
And if so, are you ready to cut back on other social programs to pay for these transplants or just essential
services.
Your right Ray money means more than life itself
That's a bull article. The first guy was going to get a privately funded transplant but died from complications. The second person you have no details on, just someone who is not a physician making a guess as to why the person "most likely" died.
So you are saying government has an endless supply of our money?Your right Ray money means more than life itself
And so you come back with a cliche about life so
much more important than money.
You forgot to add: If it only saves one life, it
is worth it.
He had Chronic Hepa is C. Do you know what the that is? They give him a new liver and it would just attack THAT liver. They didn't say he couldn't have a transplant, just that Medicare wouldn't pay for it.
so it's a death panel
yawn
It's a terminal illness
and your point?
Life is terminal.
AZ just decided to speed up the date on these folks because AZ believes in the sanc y of life.
apparently not spending $1.4 million on sick Arizona natives will go a long way towards balancing their $8.5 billion budget.
"Maybe you're better off, uh, not having the surgery, but taking, uh, the pain killer..." -- Barack Hussein Obama (non-Socialist)
"Maybe I, uh, didn't know what I was talking about without a, uh, YouTube..." -- DarrinS (diligent office worker)
Darrin,
Unless you have personally watched someone you love beg to to be allowed to die to stop the pain, or have them beg for pain medication which has been denied because the doctors concluded that the morphine could be deadly itself, please do not comment in this situation. Your ignorance is obvious and hurtful to those who have.
his ignorance is painful...but hey at least they saved 1.4 million..
Not only that, I'll bet the liver went to someone else, who didn't die because of it.
Does someone think we have an endless supply of transplantable organs?
We believe in the sanc y of life within budget parameters.
This is a low blow rhetoric shot I expected from someone other than you chump....
Well it is actually the case. Transplant organs are rationed (!) and cost is a major concern.
I don't think it is an indelicate way to put it in light of all the health care rhetoric of the past couple of years. What people claim to fear happening in the future has already been going on.
Death Panel! Why isn't Sarah Palin all over this? I'm shocked!
Not yet, but maybe relatively soon. Depending on whether the bat- GOP finds a way to obstruct stem-sell research like they did for most of the past two decades.
Embryonic Stem Cell Research has not produced any positive results for anything. Adult Stem Cell Research, on the other hand (and not opposed by the GOP) has.
Really? Chumpy?
I'm from Missouri. Show me.
Uh? The first step with adult stem cells is to induce them into a pluripotent state, which basically means turn them into their embryonic equivalents.
Whatever results you get from adult stems cells you can obtain from embryonic. You're just adding an extra step (which obviously cost money and time).
Embryonic stem cells are basically pluripotent from the get go, and arguably better suited to do actual stem cell research. It's just hard to develop results when funding to do actual research on them is basically banned, whereas adult stem cells do not have that limitation.
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