Governor Grim Reaper’s Death Panel Claims Another Life

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Governor Grim Reaper (as dubbed by E.J. Montini of the Arizona Republic) and her death panel have claimed another life. The Arizona Daily Star reports Patient cut from transplant list dies:

A patient who was refused a liver transplant because of state budget cuts has died, Tucson's University Medical Center confirmed Wednesday.

The death was "most likely" due to the defunding of certain organ transplants that had been previously covered by the state's Medicaid program, said University of Arizona Surgery Department spokeswoman Jo Marie Gellerman.

She could not release any further information about the patient, who was taken off the waiting list Oct. 1 when Arizona stopped paying for certain organ transplants for patients covered by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

The patient did not die at UMC but had been waiting for a transplant at the Tucson hospital before being removed from the waiting list, Gellerman said. She said the patient died at another health-care facility.

The patient is the second person known to die after being denied a transplant due to the funding cuts. A 38-year-old Goodyear man on AHCCCS who was denied a bone-marrow transplant died in November.

Between 95 and 100 people who were waiting for transplants in Arizona were affected by the cuts.

AHCCCS officials stressed Wednesday that even without the funding cuts, not all the people on the waiting list would have received an organ. AHCCCS spokeswoman Monica Coury said the actual effect of the defunding would be 15 fewer transplants covered by AHCCCS per year.

Well now, that makes all the difference. Two dead, thirteen to go. Who will be the lucky winner of the lottery to be the next victim of Governor Grim Reaper's death panel? Have we decided that fifteen is the appropriate number of people to die so that we do not have to raise taxes on the wealthy? Now that is the real death tax.

The incoming minority leader of the state Senate, Democrat David Schapira of Tempe, has prefiled proposed legislation to restore the transplant coverage this legislative session.

"It's time to put politics aside and restore the transplant funding," Schapira said Wednesday in a prepared statement. "Failure to restore this funding is a death sentence for people who have committed no crimes."

A consortium of leading transplant surgeons in Arizona has provided state leaders with new data on outcomes for the transplants affected, imploring them to reconsider the cuts.

Republican state Sen. Frank Antenori of Tucson told the Star earlier this week that if the data justifies it, there's a good chance the funding will be restored.

Some business leaders in Tucson and Phoenix are stepping in and trying to raise the money privately, saying they can't stand by and watch people die.

Yes, there is nothing like watching actual people suffer and die needlessly to shock the moral conscience. These people are not just numbers on an actuarial table, Sen. Antenori. Find some humanity.

On Wednesday, Senator-elect Kyrsten Sinema was a guest on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, who continues to give this story the appropriate attention it deserves.

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