Do you agree with Arizona Medicaid officials’ decision to
discontinue payment for many transplant procedures?
THIS?WEEK’S?WEB?POLL:
Do you agree with Arizona Medicaid officials’ decision to discontinue payment for many transplant procedures?
Yes
4
No
5
? Karen Anderson: “Tough call but transplant recipients are not the most cost effective use of medical dollars and states have to make cuts somewhere. Better than cutting health care for children as our current governor favors.”
? Bert Berson: “Only if it assures tax cuts for incomes over $250,000.”
? Chris Bryant: “No, this is just the start of rationed health care.”
? Bob Chidester: “Yes. Medicaid was designed to assist the poor with basic medical coverage and was never meant to provide all possible services regardless of cost. Transplants cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each and the system just cannot sustain these enormous expenditures. There is only so much money to go around. This is why we need to consider eliminating medical coverage for people who are in this country illegally. For example, women illegally in California are about 5 percent of the population but consume 40 percent of the public funded births. The cost for delivery, c-sections and premature births for these illegals costs the California taxpayers between $2.8 and $3.5 billion annually. Arizona probably has a similar problem.”
? David Cohen: “No because it clearly establishes the death panels that were feared with the passage of the national health care bill. It’s cruel and unusual punishment for those unable to afford private insurance coverage.”
? Julian Mancias: “No. Imagine if it were you or someone that you loved.”
? Henry Miller: “No. And I’m sure they wouldn’t agree either if it was a matter of life and death, they were unable to afford the transplant, and the recipient was one of their family members.”
? Lisa Pampuch: “No. This change, dubbed ‘Brewercare,’ has the real death panels – not the end-of-life counseling that Republicans fear-mongered about in Obama’s plan. The New York Times was right to call this ‘death by budget cuts.'”
? Jeff Smith: “If you don’t have the funding, cuts have to be made somewhere. It’s sad and unfortunate for those already on the waiting list. A better approach, if transplants were the area they chose to cut, would be to cover all those currently on the list, but don’t add any new patients. I think we will see more of this in the future under Obamacare, not less.”
? Steve Staloch: “No, it’s a form of state-sanctioned euthanasia.”
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