I can't believe this -- Medicaid is eliminating funding for organ transplants. "Go home and die."

[anneboleyn]

This was discussed on 60 Minutes tonight, as part of a general story about the states and the terrible cuts being made across the board -- devastating our public education, pensions for state workers, and healthcare for the poor, elderly, and disabled. As another poster noted, 60 Minutes didn't address the corruption -- the rich, as usual, getting tax cuts and avoiding penalties while the poor and middle-class suffer miserably as the states make "hard decisions" -- "hard decisions" that always impact the poor and middle-class, of course.

In Arizona (this started in November), Medicaid will no longer fund organ transplants in a large number of cases, considering transplants to be "elective surgery." Yes, *elective surgery.* A 36 y.o. father who needed a heart transplant due to a childhood illness was told he needed to raise his own funding for the procedure, as Medicaid would now no longer pay for his heart transplant. Sure, a Medicaid patient will be able to raise his own funding for a heart transplant! I have no doubt that other states will follow AZ's lead in this matter to help "reduce costs."

Now go home and die, all of you poor and disabled.

This is an automatic death sentence. How can this happen? And people aren't in the streets here, in our own country, over these devastating, literal life-and-death decisions being made by our state governments? It's just so depressing. I know our healthcare situation is just terrible, but this I find especially dismal. It is a clear, open, brutal attack directly on the poor and disabled, effectively informing them that if they are in need of an organ transplant, they are not worth the money and should just go home, shut up, and die. I can't believe what is happening -- healthcare is being destroyed for the poor. And the slashing silently continues.