May you get exactly what you want for others.
Posted on 08/28/2012 11:47:34 AM PDT by Coleus
Lung cancer patient, Barbara Wagner, was recently notified that her oncologist-prescribed medication that would slow the growth of cancer would not be covered by the Oregon Health Plan; the plan, however, she was informed, would cover doctor-assisted suicide should she wish to kill herself.
"Treatment of advanced cancer that is meant to prolong life, or change the course of this disease, is not a covered benefit of the Oregon Health Plan," read the letter notifying Wagner of the health plan’s decision.
Wagner says she was shocked by the decision. "To say to someone, we’ll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it’s cruel," she told the Register-Guard. "I get angry. Who do they think they are?"
This past Monday morning, however, Wagner had reason to rejoice. A representative from the company that manufactures the treatment called the cancer patient to say they would give her the medication for free.
"I am just so thrilled," she said. "I am so relieved and so happy."
Dr. Walter Shaffer, medical director of the state Division of Medical Assistance Programs, which administers the Oregon Health Plan, attempted to defend the health plan’s decision. "We can’t cover everything for everyone," he said. "We try to come up with polices that provide the most good for the most people." Shaffer then addressed a priority list that had been developed to ration health care. "There’s some desire on the part of the framers of this list to not cover treatments that are futile," he said, "or where the potential benefit to the patient is minimal in relation to the expense of providing the care."
According to an AP story on Wagner’s case, local oncologists in Oregon have said that, despite the Health Services Commission’s assertion that they were just clarifying policies already in place, healthcare practitioners have observed a sizable shift in policy in the way recurrent cancer is treated in the state. Increasingly, say local oncologists, sufferers of recurrent cancer are not receiving coverage for chemotherapy. They are always, however, eligible for state-funded assisted suicide.
Wesley J. Smith, a prominent conservative bioethicist, says that he was not surprised by the events.
"We have been warning for years that this was a possibility in Oregon. Medicaid is rationed, meaning that some treatments are not covered. But assisted suicide is always covered. And now, Barbara Wagner was faced with that very scenario."
Smith also mentioned a similar circumstance that had occurred in the past: "This isn’t the first time this has happened either. A few years ago a patient who needed a double organ transplant was denied the treatment but would have been eligible for state-financed assisted suicide."
Obama care!Coming to a state near you.
Mr. RomneyCARE is bringing death to all Americans
through his damned socialized medicine.
The GOP is now cursed as it will feature
the AUTHOR OF DEATH PANELS.
Outrage bookmark!!
Everyone needs to blog ,post,tweet and email this article to friends and family!!
This is Obamacare in a nutshell.
Please pass around.
Everybody deserves free health care - it’s a right! Of course, since it’s free, and the bureaucracy has since scared off good doctors, it’s now a 6 month wait to see your GP, and after that another 6 months to see an oncologist. Since we’re so short on doctors, they relaxed the strict guidlines of becoming a doctor so now the 22 year old will be performing your colonoscopy. Wish him luck, it’s his first surgery!!!
Ask any sheeperal, and they’ll vehemently claim that 0bamacare means as much free healthcare as anyone wants,
and they’ll get angry if you try to show them otherwise.
I’m OK with them not covering either.
The state could reduce costs even further by cutting out the middle man, the physician, and just sending an enforcer to your door to shoot you. < /sarc>
Sounds like a Steven Wright line: I called the Oregon suicide hot line, they said OK.
“Dr. Death,” Jack Kevorkian, would be so proud were he alive.
Sarah Palin was right: Death Panels!
And if you agree to become Soylent Green they will pay per pound!!
“These cases are always sad individually, but collectively they would all bankrupt the system. Even private insurance has caps on it for lifetime expenditures in nearly every policy.”
I rented to a woman who was getting free cancer treatment and surgery; some sort of government assistance. She literally smoked and sipped beer every waking moment. I was over there once really early to fix a leak. She had “staged” a beer and cigarette next to the toilet and lit and popped the beer the moment she got up. When she moved out, with months of unpaid rent, she left $100 worth of EBT card steaks in the refrigerator with the power off for two weeks. She did take all the beer.
Why were the taxpayers paying for her to eat steak and get free medical when she couldn’t be bothered to quit smoking and drinking? How did this woman with all her medical problems afford an awesome quantity of beer and cigarettes daily? Were it not for the taxpayer she might have been forced to make real world economic decisions like buying food instead of beer and cigarettes. Giving up those two things would have done more for her health than any medical care.
This is exactly why these decisions need to be made by the family and any PRIVATE charity that these patients seek help from.
The lady you described would have been told, gently at first, to change her ways or be dropped from the charity.
Then the charity could have privately decided that she was wasting their resources and cut her off until such time as she straightened up.
Once again, free enterprise doing what government can’t do.
Until American medicine was DESTROYED by Romney
and Obama, those decisions were personal between
doctor and patient.
There was NO rationing by the government, as there is
now thanks to Romney, Reid, and Obama.
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