Arizona Medicaid cuts will deny medical treatments in life-or-death situations!

[Better Believe It]

This is outrageous! And next year Congress will be considering deep cuts in Medicaid in order to cut the deficit! BBI



Arizona Medicaid Cuts Seen as a Sign of the Times
By KEVIN SACK
December 4, 2010

With enrollments exploding, revenues shrinking and the low-hanging fruit plucked long ago, virtually every state has had to make painful cuts to its Medicaid program during the economic downturn.

What distinguishes the reductions recently imposed in Arizona, where coverage was eliminated on Oct. 1 for certain transplants of the heart, liver, lung, pancreas and bone marrow, is the decision to stop paying for treatments urgently needed to ward off death.

The cuts in transplant coverage, which could deny organs to 100 adults currently on the transplant list, are testament to both the severity of fiscal pressures on the states and the particular bloodlessness of budget-cutting in Arizona.

“It’s a real sign of the times,” said Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy. “And I think this is a precursor to a much larger number of states having this discussion.”

The Arizona case, said Diane Rowland, director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, “is a classic example of making decisions based not on medical need but based on a budget.” And, she added, “it results, potentially, in denial of care to individuals in a life-or-death situation.”

“It seems inappropriate that life-saving care has the potential to be withheld based solely on budgetary issues and the bureaucratic determination of relative benefits,” said Dr. Robert S. Gaston, president-elect of the American Society of Transplantation.

Jennifer Carusetta, the legislative liaison for Arizona’s Medicaid agency, said the transplant cuts would save a mere $800,000 in the current fiscal year, and only $1.4 million for a full year.

The cuts were imposed in an effort to close a $2.6 billion shortfall in the state’s $8.9 billion budget for this year.

Read the full article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/us/05transplant.html?_r=1&hp

[Faygo Kid]

1. Keith has been all over this - good to see someone else notice.

When the hell did the good people of Arizona lose their collective minds? A totally nuts governor and a contemptible senator - make that two.

Oh well, at least they can enjoy bashing illegal immigrants while they watch people die who have the misfortune of not being at enough of a wealth threshhold to have the GOP fight passionately for their tax cuts.

[Vinca]

3. The 27 year old woman he had on last night broke my heart.

How on earth can they vote to stop a lung transplant that is her only hope? It's not like it's experimental surgery . . . it's done all the time. Arizona is imposing the death penalty for the crime of becoming ill.

[dennis4868]

2. Hey Sara Palin....

Would you call this a death panel?

[Angry Dragon]

4. sarah would just call it a necessary budget cut

republicans do not do death panels, because they care
notice she is real quiet about these things now
too busy sucking money from her fans for her toilet paper book

[sharesunited]

11. She WILL and she will say it is Obamacare to blame.

[aquart]

5. Which can be reversed if all the tax cuts sunset.

Right now the fed has no money for states. There used to be bundles. Now the rich people have it stashed in Switzerland and other fun places.

Sunset saves lives. Sunset saves AMERICAN lives.

[Monique1]

6. At the same time

Jan Brewer is able to afford a doctor to monitor her daily for a heart condition. Enough said?

[Desertrose]

8. Wait...she HAS a heart?

Coulda fooled me!

[DesertFlower]

7. i e-mailed by republican friend a few links

about the medicaid cuts. her son in law is disabled and on medicaid. so is her daughter and granddaugher. her response: "did the mexicans suck all the money out of arizona"?

[femrap]

10. You can tell her that

TPTB like the Mexicans much more than her children...they work for little money, can't complain about injustice, if the Mexican women are raped, they just have to suck it up....they can't go to the police.

People like this drive me nuts!

Wait until her children are denied help.

[DesertFlower]

12. they drive me nuts too.

[NNN0LHI]

9. This is about as sickening as it gets

They have the cops working overtime tyring to intimidate Latino people into leaving the state while their citizens are dying from preventable illnesses.

Why would anyone want to live there?

Don

[blondeatlast]

14. I LOVE the desert, but I've absolutely had enough. I am looking to move

before my son starts high school next year.

It's heartbreaking--I lived here even before the state had one million people, much less Phoenix alone. But it is more than I can stand--SB 1070 put me over the edge.

[elehhhhna]

15. Wonder who the next scapegoat group will be once the Latinos go away.

Ten bucks says it's Liberals. Then intellectuals...professors... We know the drill.

[BzaDem]

13. For all those against Obama's healthcare law, his law BANS states from doing this in 2014, AND

expands Medicaid by 15 million people.

That's right -- HALF the insurance expansion in HCR is through a government-run program.

[Better Believe It]

16. Arizona Moving Toward Wealth-Based Organ Transplant Process

Watercooler – Arizona Moving Toward Wealth-Based Organ Transplant Process
By: Jim Moss
December 3, 2010

If you need a certain type of organ transplant and live in Arizona, you’d better have a big bank account:

"Effective at the beginning of October, Arizona stopped financing certain transplant operations under the state’s version of Medicaid. Many doctors say the decision amounts to a death sentence for some low-income patients, who have little chance of survival without transplants and lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them…

Organ transplants are already the subject of a web of regulations, which do not guarantee that everyone in need of a life-saving organ will receive one. But Arizona’s transplant specialists are alarmed that patients who were in line to receive transplants one day were, after the state’s budget cuts to its Medicaid program, ruled ineligible the next — unless they raised the money themselves."

This policy lies in fundamental opposition to everything that progressives believe – and this is just the beginning of what we’ll see in the coming years. The time to stand up and fight is now.

http://my.firedoglake.com/justjim73/2010/12/03/watercooler-arizona-moving-toward-wealth-based-organ-transplant-process/

[defendandprotect]

17. Evidently will prevent children from getting transplants ... and she has also

added or upped taxes on food!!