The Nightmare of Rationing in Oregon (medical rationing)

Pajamas Media ^ | August 23, 2009 | Jeff Emanuel

[decimon]

Two cases of “public option” administrators rejecting patient requests for lifesaving or life-extending drugs (and instead offering to fund those patients’ assisted suicides) reached the mainstream media in the last two weeks. This has caused critics of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul proposal to look to Oregon for clues about what a national health system would bring.

The picture is not pretty. Oregon, the only state to allow assisted suicide (via the 1997 “Death With Dignity Law”), has used its public health care “option” as a pretext for enacting an official policy of trading lives that bureaucrats determine to be “expendable” for monetary savings by the government.

The problem does not end with the state government either condoning or encouraging suicide. Rather, it comes as a result of the public option’s bureaucratic masters, who have made Oregon’s government the first in the world to officially prioritize treatments for the express purpose of rationing care.

Bureaucrats crunching the “comparative effectiveness” numbers — a benign-sounding term that is government code for “rationing” — at Oregon Health Services Commission headquarters have come up with a master list of 503 treatments and conditions the “public option” will cover for its enrollees. They have ranked them in ascending order of priority.

[Always Right]

You know I bet Oregon does not officially put Death Panels in their bill.....but Palin is 100% correct. They will be Death Panels, just under a different name.

[Always Right]

They = There....too early

[decimon]

They = There....too early

Must be too early. I didn't notice the typo.

[sr4402]

Here is Oregons List (Starts at Page 79):

http://www.oregon.gov/OHPPR/HSC/docs/09HSCBiennialReport.pdf

[sr4402]

PRIORITIZED LIST OF HEALTH SERVICES 2010-2011 BIENNIUM

Condition: TOBACCO DEPENDENCE Treatment: MEDICAL THERAPY/BRIEF COUNSELING NOT TO EXCEED 10 FOLLOW-UP VISITS OVER 3 MONTHS Line: 6

Condition: TYPE I DIABETES MELLITUS Treatment: MEDICAL THERAPY Line: 10

Tobacco Dependence and Obesity is higher priority than Diabetes! and much else. Yeah, wacked out priority list.

[decimon]

Thanks. Political institutions will increasingly have political priorities.

[Salvation]

**The picture is not pretty. Oregon, the only state to allow assisted suicide (via the 1997 “Death With Dignity Law”), has used its public health care “option” as a pretext for enacting an official policy of trading lives that bureaucrats determine to be “expendable” for monetary savings by the government.**

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[Salvation]

Oregon Ping

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