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Medicaid patients killed by budget cuts

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Stitch, Dec 2, 2010.

  1. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    Some hyperbole in the thread title, but a NY Times story (shocking, I know) tries to blame state budget cuts for patients dying because Arizona won't cover transplants.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/us/03transplant.html

    The University of Arizona doctor in charge of the bone marrow transplant program should be pointing the blame at his own institution, which would let someone die without a transplant.
     
  2. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    No, you really can't blame the hospitals for not doing these operations -- and the lifetime of extensive follow-up care -- for free.

    The legislature slashed the shit out of health care in Arizona. Now that they are discovering that sick people die without health care, they're making some noises about restoring funding. We'll see. Their attempts to blame federal health care reform are nauseating, but par for the course for the leadership of Arizona.
     
  3. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    Is there a point where society shouldn't pay? The line is somewhere, whether it's paying for food, housing or other services. I once interviewed Rep. Colin Peterson (D-Minn.) where he talked about curtailing end of life care and said it cost too much. Not many people can afford a transplant. For those working who end up needing one, I bet they qualify for Medicaid because they are too sick to work.
     
  4. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    This issue is a helluva lot more complicated than "people die without care" or "society shouldn't have to pay for everyone else."

    We absolutely cannot afford to pay for every life-saving procedure that everybody might need, especially when many of those "saves" are only extending life by a few months. We also don't want to be the kind of society that says "screw you" to dying people. Or at least I think we don't.
     
  5. J-School Blue

    J-School Blue Member

    This, basically. AZ has no money and the Legislature resists any attempt to do anything that might shore up funding. The governor's attempt to put in a small increase to the sales tax - a watered-down, compromise, better-than-nothing measure - caused a near-nuclear meltdown and screeching by the fuckwads who populate my state House and Senate. It finally went to a referendum and was passed by a damn wide margin by the voters because...not having money is scary and will cause shit like this to happen, and everyone who is not an elected state official seems to understand this.

    Just...fuck them all. Fuck them all with the violent vigor and careless fisting they are using to fuck me and the rest of us who live here. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, Arizona State Legislature. There are certainly larger important national issues this raises, I do not doubt. But seriously. If every single fucking fuckstain of an fuckwad representative magically disappeared from the face of the Earth tomorrow, our state would instantly be better off.
     
  6. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Oh, it's a legitimately difficult issue. My shop is the one that first covered the guy mentioned in the piece who has Hep C and needs a new liver. He had a donor liver lined up, was ready for the transplant, but was denied and the liver went to someone else.

    I'm no expert here, but I believe the Hepatitis C means that new liver will eventually be destroyed, too. So there's a really tough issue to deal with when you measure cost for a delay of the inevitable.

    At the same time the guy's a dad, and the thought of his little girls growing up without a father because we decided having a father wasn't worth the cost sickens me.

    The state is in a huge financial mess. The entire economy was based on growth and the housing industry, and that's dead right now. Massive budget cuts are needed.

    But here's the thing: if you feel the need to cut health care to make up for it, have the balls to stand up and explain it. Don't claim you didn't know health cuts would hurt people, and for God's sake, don't try to blame Obama, which is fucking cowardly and offensive. The cuts were made before the federal health care bill passed, and this has jack shit to do with that. A good chunk of Arizona's leadership has decided to blame every single thing on (a) Obama and (b) Mexicans. When you're trying to score political points using the dead and dying, that's reprehensible.
     
  7. J-School Blue

    J-School Blue Member

    It really is horrific to a soul- and stomach-churning level.

    Meh, going further down this road will lead to political ranting from me. Just trust me. As someone who lives in Arizona, my chief frustration with SB1070 is that it created a giant bonfire of a smoke screen for our real problems and got a lot of fuckers who should've (and were on the path to being until focus went off the economy and on Mexicans) been run out of office on a rail reelected.
     
  8. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Cut it off. Cold.

    Let people see what the consequences are.
     
  9. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    You're like a broken record. That really sucks.
     
  10. Ben_Hecht

    Ben_Hecht Active Member

    Death Panel this, you douchebag humps.
     
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