http://health.change.org/blog/...r_transplant_program
Death by Budget Cuts: Arizona Governor Slashes Funding for Transplant Program
by Brie Cadman
quote:For transplant patients in Arizona, the warnings about death panels and health care rationing have come true, but they have nothing to do with health care reform. Instead, a Republican Governor and her allies are standing in the way of patient care, declining requests to reinstate funding for a critical, life-saving program.
Facing state budget problems, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer slashed funding for the state's Medicaid program that covered organ transplants. As a result some patients that were covered by the state and waiting for a transplant were cut from the program effective October 1st, leading to what some doctors are calling "death by budget cuts."
The impact on patients has been swift and dramatic. The Tuscon Sentinel profiles Randy Shepherd, a 36-year-old father of three, that has been living with a pacemaker for the past three years and was moving on to his last treatment option, a heart transplant. Shepherd had rheumatic fever as a child and the disease damaged his heart. Unable to get coverage because of the pre-existing condition (with health care reform, denials of this type will not be allowed), he went on Medicaid.
But while he was waiting for the heart transplant, Brewer cut funding for certain transplants under Arizona's Medicaid program, the Health Care Cost Containment System. His heart transplant would no longer be covered.
Other patients include Tiffany Tate, a twenty-seven-year-old woman that has had cystic fibrosis since she was two and now needs a lung transplant. But she didn't get the transplant before October and now there is no money available for her to get the procedure....
The $1.4 million cut has had a dramatic impact on the lives of the patients and their families, but it could've been avoided. According to the Sentinel, projects that were funded include a $20 million renovation to a roof of the Arizone Veterans Memorial Coliseum and a $2 million grant for algae research....