No mistaking what's going on here. This woman was not denied life-extending treatment for cancer by her state-run health care system because of questionable effectiveness or unacceptable side effects or any medical reason. She was denied because it cost too much in the opinion of the officials that run the state agency, and she was offered hospice or physician-assisted suicide instead. I am not making this up.
Read the article. I invite comments if anyone is so inclined.
Anyone already enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, or other collective systems is already aware of the problems with covered procedures, treatments, and medications. Anyone who isn't and isn't familiar would be mind-boggled by it, completely mind-boggled.
If anyone is of the belief that state- or federally-administered health care is the answer, please tell me so I may disabuse you of that incorrect assumption.
Absolutely horrifying.
| Oregon state-run health care offers patient "assisted suicide" instead of care | |
| What This Means For You - Physicians for Healthcare Reform Source: physiciansforreform.org | |
| | |
| Parin Stormlaughter sent this using ShareThis. | |
This situation was brought up last November here in WA state quite a bit, as we voted on (and passed) an initiative to legalize "death with dignity".
ReplyDeleteI wish I could find where I read this last fall, but there's another side to this story. Something about how the specific treatment she wanted covered by her health insurance was very experimental and very expensive. I'm not saying her health insurance wasn't at fault for sending her the letter, but as we both know, insurance companies never like to cover procedures/treatments/medications that are expensive and/or experimental - and if they're both, there's no way they'll be covered.
This is one of those very complex problems that doesn't have a simple solution.
Be well,
MJ
MJ! Good to hear from you!
ReplyDeleteYour state allows people with private insurance to be covered by state-run health care too? We don't have that here in Alabama.
For the state to tell this poor woman that they wouldn't pay for her to live but would pay for her die sounds like something out of the movie Soylent Green to me.
Please do try to find links to the articles you're thinking of. If the authors of the article from Physicians for Reform got their facts wrong, I'll most certainly tell them and blog about it here. According to the article and the quotes from the state health officials, money was the only issue.
I'd love to know everything else there is about this situation.
Take care hon! *hugs*