Second Arizona Patient Dies After Transplant Coverage Denied

When Republicans talk about health care rationing, they are almost always hoping to equate it (erroneously) to health care reform. But in Arizona, Republican rationing has led to the denial of life-saving treatments -- and has resulted in another death.

As reported in The Arizona Republic, a second transplant candidate has died because they were denied coverage after Governor Jan Brewer slashed funding for the state's Medicaid program for organ transplants.

Hospital officials say that the budget cuts were to blame for the patients death. "We believe that it's likely that they died because they were unable to get a transplant," a University Medical Center spokesperson told the paper.

This is the second patient to have died since Brewer pulled the plug on certain transplants in Arizona's Medicaid program, the Health Care Cost Containment System. 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 first person to have died was Mark Price, a leukemia patient seeking a bone-marrow transplant. His doctor found him a match, but it was on the day the cuts went into effect, so he no longer qualified. Amazingly, an anonymous donor offered to cover the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the surgery, but it was too late. His cancer came back before the operation could be done and he soon passed away.

Time is critical to transplant patients, and the upheaval in funding can mean deathly delays. The most recent patient had hepatitis C and was recommended for a liver transplant. But he was taken off the donor list when his coverage lapsed due to the budget cuts. Doctors say he would have moved to the top of the waiting list because his condition had dramatically worsened.

While the cost to an individual is significant -- in dollars and life -- the overall saving from the program is relatively small, if at all. According to The Republic, cutting the program is estimated to save $5.3 million this year, but Arizona will lose around $20 million in federal matching funds. Arizona is the only state to have eliminated transplant coverage under Medicaid.

Budget cuts have to come from somewhere, but cutting funding from a program that is integral in saving lives and preventing death? This is true health care rationing. Tell Governor Brewer that her cuts to the transplant program were unconscionable and that she should immediately reinstate  the funding.

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