Arizona GOP Death Panel Denies Lung Transplant To Catholic High School Coach

[Amerigo Vespucci]

December 05, 2010 01:00 PM
Arizona GOP Death Panel Denies Lung Transplant To Catholic High School Coach
By Susie Madrak

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/arizona-gop-death-panel-denies-lung-t

Via Open Left, this heartbreaking story:

Tiffany Tate needs a lung transplant. She was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when she was just four months old. It is a condition that's made it impossible to work full time, impossible to get health insurance. Her lungs will deteriorate with age.

So at age 27, Tiffany Tate needs a lung transplant. But in our third story, if all that were not enough, add one new obstacle because Tiffany Tate lives in Arizona.

And she is just the latest person to fall victim to Governor Jan Brewer and the death panel. She joins me in a moment. As we have reported on this news hour, Governor Brewer and state Republican lawmakers have cut funding for arizona's Medicaid program access, thus denying life-saving organ transplants to low-income patients.

The governor calls the program a "Cadillac plan" and has defended her death panel by explaining that transplants qualify as "Cadillac" and optional care.

[Ken Burch]

1. Don't tell me...Jan Brewer thinks Tiffany Tate snuck in from Mexico...

:puke:

[the redcoat]

2. Jan Brewer is a capitalist.

I figure if people can say "socialist" with an evil sneer whenever anyone talks about how the rich shouldn't own everything, then I should start using the word "capitalist" as a derogatory term for people who make decisions based on money that are anti-humanist.

So, with an evil, hateful sneer, I say "Jan Brewer is a capitalist."

[Drale]

4. When someone says "socialist" like its evil

you have to challenge them and say "So?" and ask them whats wrong with being a socialist, because I my experience very few can tell you why they don't like socialists. Thats what I do at least.

[jody]

3. Transplants are a zero-sum game, someone else with a higher priority received a transplant. The

issue is very important to me because my late wife of 47 years needed a kidney but her priority was not high enough to qualify.

My wife's four siblings offered kidneys but were not matches.

I tried to trade one of my kidneys for one from someone else who needed one for their loved one.

I know no way to reconcile my family's grief over our loss with societies' authority to select recipients of scarce organs.

[Initech]

5. I'm gonna throw this story back in the pukes' faces every time they mention death panels.

Seriously, this is sickening. How can someone be so fucking soulless?

[Johnny Harpo]

6. The People of Arizona Need To Re-Call This 'Governor'....

before she can screw up their state any further.

Organ tranplants have become an accepted, almost common, medical procedure in cases where other treatment has not been successful other wise.

This procedure is not a 'Cadillac option' for this young woman, it is a 'Chevrolet necessity'.

Sleep well Governor Brewer...I hope the ghosts of everything you are afraid of terrorize you every time you close your eyes.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

7. Not to wish Jan ill will, but

I hope this haunts her conscience for eternity.

[Lucian]

8. What a soulless, heartless, human being.

The people of Arizona need to kick her out of office now.

[jody]

9. HRSA stats, OPTN 108k+ candidates for 7k+ organs. How would you choose recipients?

Organdonor.gov
Waiting list 108,725
Donors 7,136 January - June 2010

My body has been a donor for over 20 years.

Have you and all those who read this thread donated their organs?

[Yo_Mama]

10. This is more lung rationing than anything else

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/478865

"Roger D. Yusen, MD, MPH, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and colleagues found that cystic fibrosis patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, an affiliated medical center, had an average survival of 5.7 years after transplantation. They concluded that the survival benefit clearly outweighed the high mortality rate immediately after surgery for these patients."

"Nearly half the population, 121 patients, received new lungs. Of these, 76% lived two years. Survival after transplantation was reported to range from 84% at one year to 45% at seven years. A total of 65 transplanted patients were still alive at the end of the study."

There is no way to avoid some rationing.

Here is more from the cystic fibrosis foundation. There is a good success with live donor (someone gives part of their lung) transplants, and I wonder if that has been checked.
http://www.cff.org/treatments/LungTransplantation/

[True_Blue]

11. Another victim

"AHCCCS patient dies awaiting bone marrow transplant"

PHOENIX -- A Valley man who took center stage in the debate over state budget cuts that stopped funding for certain transplants has died.

Mark Price, 37, had battled leukemia for about a year. He died at a Valley hospital Sunday from complications of chemotherapy treatment.

Price hoped for a bone marrow transplant, but was notified in September that the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System would not fund the $250,000 operation because it had stopped paying for certain transplants due to budget cuts. An anonymous donor came forward in October and offered to pay for the transplant. However, Price died before the procedure was done.
http://ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=1359593

[ProudProgressiveNow]

12. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's Death Panels!

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's Death Panels!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1azVhytJYQ