http://www.projo.com/opinion/editorials/content/ED_deathpanel31_12-31-10_I2LK4D6_v39.86f1b6.html01:00 AM EST on Friday, December 31, 2010
During the long and unpleasant debate over health-care reform, Republicans made much of the erroneous allegation that what they call “ObamaCare” would somehow establish “death panels” to determine whether a patient should receive expensive care that could keep him or her alive. Or, to be more precise, whether government or an insurance company would pay for it.
Of course, we have long had death panels –– presided over by the highly profitable insurance companies (who financed much of the last GOP campaign) that decide whether they will cover this or that procedure — that is, if the patient has insurance at all. If not, then a person can hope that tax money via Medicaid or Medicare would pay for at least some of it.
But actually, we do have “death panels” going strong in Republican-run Arizona! There the state-run Medicaid program is stopping the state funding of some transplant programs, leaving around 100 patients to die because the Republican governor and GOP-run legislature don’t want to raise taxes. These are patients who either cannot get insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions (something that will be fixed by “ObamaCare”) or are simply too poor to buy it.
The challenge is that the state, for a while considered another Sunbelt conservative paradise, has a $1.5 billion budget deficit, and the reigning mission in Republican jurisdictions — one that trumps all others — is implementing and/preserving tax cuts. (Arizona has been using federal stimulus money from the Democrats in Washington to paper over its fiscal problems.)
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