New Coalition Seeks to Restore Arizona Medicaid Funding
98 Arizonans were promised then denied coverage for life saving organ transplants. New Coalition forms to pressure legislature and Governor to restore funding.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan 13, 2011
For more information contact:
Bob Aronson
904-434-6512
Jacksonville, Florida
bob@baronson.org
http://bobsnewheart.wordpress.com
New Coalition Seeks to Restore Arizona Medicaid Transplant Funding
A powerful new organization has been formed to help restore Medicaid coverage for Arizona organ transplant patients and to prevent similar cuts in other states. The mission of “The Dream of Life Intervention Coalition” (DLIC) is to help patients with life-threatening health conditions get or keep Medicaid and/or Medicare insurance coverage.
The DLIC will emphasize four points in its campaign:
1. Denying Medicaid patients organ transplants is a death sentence. Transplants are their only option for living. (Two have already died in Arizona and 30 more could die this year. Many children will be left with one parent, others could become orphans).
2. If we don’t reverse the Arizona situation it could be seen by other states as permission to do the same thing and these death panels will begin to spread across the nation (If that happens, thousands if not millions could be sentenced to death and despair by budget slashing, heartless politicians. What’s next, banning chemo or radiation therapy for cancer patients? Is that what America is about?)
3. DLIC strongly believes that sending people to their death is no way to solve budget problems (doing so flies in the face of the constitutional guarantee that our government exists to protect its citizens and provide for their general welfare. The constitution does not say that killing citizens is permissible if it will save money.)
4. We do not want to allow these issues to go unaddressed and therefore encourage medical tourism or influence migration to other states or countries that have more accessible health benefits (that would shift the burden to regions that are unprepared to absorb the impact while maintaining the human and moral commitment to be socially responsible for our citizens).
Circumstances
On October 1, 2010 the state of Arizona told 98 of its legal citizens that Medicaid would not cover life saving organ transplants despite having promised them earlier that the procedures would be covered. Since that order, two of the 98 have died and another is said to be selling her belongings in order to move somewhere where Medicaid will cover her liver transplant. Governor Jan Brewer says the cuts were made to help reduce the state’s budget deficit. She remains opposed to restoring the funding.
Last Monday January 10, 2011, leaders of several advocacy groups joined in a conference call with Arizona senate Minority leader David Schapira and State Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D) to discuss the issue. Senator Sinema has introduced a bill she says would provide more than enough money to restore transplant funding and provide millions more to help reduce the state’s budget deficit.
The conference call revolved around ways in which DLIC could assist with the effort to restore funding. While the Governor’s office says the transplants would cost nearly $5 million, Jennifer Carusetta, legislative liaison for Arizona Medicaid, says cutting transplants would only save $800,000 in the current fiscal year, and only $1.4 million for a full year.
Participating in the call was William Remak Chair of the National Association of Hepatitis Task Forces (NAHTF), two time liver transplant recipient and cancer survivor; Julie Acklin, Arizona Director of the NAHTF; Bob Aronson, heart transplant recipient and founder of Save the Arizona 98 and Facebook’s Organ Transplant Initiative; Patricia Lupole, Director of the Hepatitis C Veterans group (thehvcvets.com) and Flor Felix representing her husband and some other Arizona citizens who have been denied Medicaid covered organ transplants. We will soon announce other members.
Senators Schapira and Sinema said that while Democratic support for the bill was strong, some in the Republican majority were willing to review it while others were less enthusiastic. As a result the new group, Dream of Life Intervention Coalition, decided unanimously to embark on a nationwide campaign to bring greater visibility to the Arizona situation and to rally public opinion to put increased pressure on Arizona officials to restore Medicaid covered organ transplant funding. Additionally DLIC will work to help ensure that Medicaid cuts throughout the country at state levels do not result in restricting life saving interventions for people in dire circumstances.
DLIC is working on a more detailed communication plan and will soon provide the public with steps they can take to begin the campaign to stop the dying by restoring funding.
***William (Bill) Remak, BSMT, BSPH, SGNA, AHCJ., has initiated coordinating this collaborative effort in response to the pleas and desperation demonstrated by the families of the chronically ill from the neighboring state of California where he sits on the steering committee of the California Chronic Care Coalition. Bill said.” No state public servant or elected official should sacrifice the lives of their constituents as a means to flex their political party muscle or power by using policy to destroy the fabric of our value as human beings. It defeats the core of our ability to thrive as a nation and can only lead to the devastation of mankind.”
-30-
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved.” -Helen Keller (1880 – 1968)
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Dream of Life Intervention Coalition is an non profit advocacy group that seeks to help patients with life-threatening health conditions get or keep Medicaid and/or Medicare insurance coverage. Our first project is to restore Arizona Medicaid funding for the 98 people who were denied organ transplatns. Bob Aronson is the founder of Save the Arizona 98 www.savethearizona98.com and Facebook's OrganTransplant Initiative.
Showing posts with label organ transplants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organ transplants. Show all posts
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Friday, December 10, 2010
Bury my Heart in an AHCCCS Patient
I felt strong enough for the first time in weeks to go out chalking today, so headed up to the Capitol Complex and Wes Bolin Park, one of my favorite spots to practice my free speech (That's 17th Ave I'm on, between W. Washington and W. Jefferson, right across the street from the legislators and governor's office buildings. The media and visitors and legislative aides all cross that sidewalk from the parking lot to get over there).
Kids were all over the place singing Christmas Carols, and naturally curious about what I was writing about. So I told them about the people who are so sick that their insurance plans wouldn't cover their most critical medical treatment, and how they needed the state to pay their medical bills through the AHCCCS program - which the Arizona republican governor and legislature, the ultimate compassionate conservatives, decided isn't going to pay for their organ transplants anymore.
Then I told the kids that if Governor Brewer doesn't restore that funding, those people will die. I even named some of them: Coach Tiffany Tate, a cystic fibrosis patient who needs a double lung transplant, Randy Shepherd, a father of 3 who needs a heart transplant, and Francisco Felix, a survivor - so far - of the deadly damage of Hepatitis C. His dying family friend even tried to give him her liver, but AHCCCS still wouldn't pay for the transplant.
I didn't mention "Death Panels" to the kids, though - I thought what I told them was heavy enough already.
In the meantime, someone called the Capitol Police on me ( they always do), assuming that what I was doing was a crime. They all know my name now, but wanted to see some ID anyway - and tried to convince me that my conduct was, in fact, against the law - they just weren't going to arrest me because I was technically in the territory of the Phoenix Police.
One of the guys was actually pretty nice about trying to intimidate me in to leaving (not this one above - he was really hostile to me when I was caught alone by him on Halloween night). I was actually pretty much done for the day, but stayed long enough to argue with the cops that not only was my mode of expression not criminal (I keep it on the ground and on city sidewalks), but that the vigor with which the state solicits the poor to harvest our organs upon our death, while justifying why we or our loved ones aren't deserving of receiving transplants in life is truly criminal.
They didn't put up much of a fight on that one.
Here's the finished product - not the greatest picture, but you get the gist...
Future Organ Donor Against Brewercare
Today is International Human Rights Day. This would be the perfect time for Governor Jan Brewer to call a special session of the legislature to pass a bill that would restore the cuts to AHCCCS funding for transplant patients - including liver transplants for people with Hepatitis C.
I find it deeply disturbing that as an Arizona citizen living in poverty, my own organs would be harvested by this state only to be doled out to the privileged few. Clearly the poor are still good enough to be preyed upon, but not worthy enough to be saved...
Is that really what Republicans stand for here?
On that note, I'm dropping this $7 check off at the Capitol Executive Building for the Governor today. Read the article below for an explanation...
I find it deeply disturbing that as an Arizona citizen living in poverty, my own organs would be harvested by this state only to be doled out to the privileged few. Clearly the poor are still good enough to be preyed upon, but not worthy enough to be saved...
Is that really what Republicans stand for here?
On that note, I'm dropping this $7 check off at the Capitol Executive Building for the Governor today. Read the article below for an explanation...
--------------from myfoxphoenix.com----------
Patients Desperately Needing Transplants Share StoriesThey call on governor to restore AHCCCS cuts
Published : Tuesday, 07 Dec 2010, 5:16 PM MST
PHOENIX - Doctors, transplant patients and Democratic lawmakers blasted what they refer to as "BrewerCare" Tuesday, calling for Governor Jan Brewer to restore the money slashed from the state's Medicaid program AHCCCS.
A news conference was held at the state Capital. Among those in attendance were four people waiting for transplants for themselves or their loved ones, and called for Brewer to do something now before its too late.
Four Arizona families in need of transplants issued an emotional plea. A woman with cystic fibrosis, a father of 3 who needs a heart transplant, a man with hepatitis C and cancer, and another man who needs a heart transplant, had their stories told.
Surrounded by several Democratic lawmakers, they called for Jan Brewer to restore the money slashed from the state's transplant program.
"If the state budget were the average American salary, the cost to restore the funding would be $7. $7 to save people's lives," says Democratic Rep. David Schapira.
House Republican Jon Kavanagh says the decision to cut certain transplants was based on incomplete data that showed low success rates. He says he's still waiting for a report.
"I have the data summary here from the group of doctors including Mayo, saying significant survival rates, but they never gave us the number, they never gave us the data, we need facts," he says.
Democrats want the governor to call a special session, or use federal stimulus funds to cover the cost. However, a spokesperson for the governor's office tells me that funds were used already for job creation, education and public safety. He says even if the funds were available, they wouldn't cover the costs necessary.Friday, May 7, 2010
State of Arizona Health Care: Killing us Softly.
Once in awhile someone at the Arizona Republic writes a decent editorial. This is one of those times. For anyone who has any doubt about the selfishness and brutality of our current Arizona legislature and governor - the Republican Party elite - read on.
The Governor just signed a new bill this week, by the way, that restores some of the other health care funds that the legislature cut this spring. The legislature reversed itself only because the feds required it in order for them to keep getting medicaid funding - not because they were concerned about all those sick citizen children they screwed.
The long and short of it: these people have very little regard for life, American or otherwise. They would kill us by withholding medical care just as readily as they would leave migrants in the desert to die, all for the sake of protecting their own assets - while levying even more taxes on ours.
Happy Hepatitis Awareness Month, by the way, dear Governor. And tomorrow begins Women's Health Care Week. These Americans - and many more in this state - will suffer terribly and die because of you and your party. Even your NRA membership can't cover up your betrayal of our citizenry - much less the rest of humanity.
So why aren't we doing it?
Some of the best doctors in Arizona told state legislators that if they cut transplant services from the AHCCCS budget, hard-working Arizonans will die.
The doctors and the people who work with their patients tried a different tack, pointing out that the cost of keeping sick patients alive until they die is more expensive in the long run than providing transplant services.
The legislators cut the services.
The doctors were from University Medical Center, Banner Good Samaritan and the Mayo Clinic.
They laid out their case in coldly understandable terms, writing, for example:
That is the short-term saving.
It is difficult to determine the long-term cost to the state of caring for patients who slowly wither away. It could take years.
Before all this occurred, I wrote a column about one of those patients, a man who has been receiving medical treatment under AHCCCS, Arizona's Medicaid program.
"I can't work anymore and we ran out of coverage a while back," he told me. "It's terrible needing help. It's not what I wanted. But when you run out of money, what can you do? If I don't get a transplant, I guess the state won't have to pay for me or worry about me until I walk into an emergency room close to dying. They can't turn me away then."
People like Charlie Thomas, a transplant social worker, have been dealing with the threat of these cuts for years, always managing to stave them off. Until this time.
This time, legislators needed a quick fix.
"The people who benefit from these transplant services are people who were working, paying taxes, being good citizens and then got sick and lost everything. They're us," Thomas told me.
Still, the services were cut.
The transplant physicians and hospitals are hoping they'll have a second chance to make their case before the new rules go into effect in July. Before people die who could otherwise be saved. They believe they have the scientific data and the economics on their side.
One of those hoping to get the Legislature to reconsider is Leo Corbett, a former state senator and one-time Republican candidate for governor who knows what it means to make tough budget decisions. He's also a heart-transplant recipient.
"I'm not sure that legislators got all the information they needed to make an informed decision," he told me. "It seemed to have been in the hands of the bean counters rather than the policy makers. I believe this can be resolved in a fiscally sound manner that still serves the need of these patients. I hope so, anyway. I believe, like a lot of people, that a society or a state is judged by how it treats its poor people. For most of these folks, the illness took all they had."
Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.
The Governor just signed a new bill this week, by the way, that restores some of the other health care funds that the legislature cut this spring. The legislature reversed itself only because the feds required it in order for them to keep getting medicaid funding - not because they were concerned about all those sick citizen children they screwed.
The long and short of it: these people have very little regard for life, American or otherwise. They would kill us by withholding medical care just as readily as they would leave migrants in the desert to die, all for the sake of protecting their own assets - while levying even more taxes on ours.
Happy Hepatitis Awareness Month, by the way, dear Governor. And tomorrow begins Women's Health Care Week. These Americans - and many more in this state - will suffer terribly and die because of you and your party. Even your NRA membership can't cover up your betrayal of our citizenry - much less the rest of humanity.
Please, America:
Nothing but grief trickles down in this state, and
they're going to criminalize and kill us for resisting anyway.
BOYCOTT ARIZONA.
Kick her out of the union, if possible,
for treason against the People.
Nothing but grief trickles down in this state, and
they're going to criminalize and kill us for resisting anyway.
BOYCOTT ARIZONA.
Kick her out of the union, if possible,
for treason against the People.
-----------------------------
Some budget cuts are death sentences
One of the strongest arguments for immigration reform is that Americans must take care of Americans first.So why aren't we doing it?
Some of the best doctors in Arizona told state legislators that if they cut transplant services from the AHCCCS budget, hard-working Arizonans will die.
The legislators cut the services.
The legislators cut the services.
The doctors were from University Medical Center, Banner Good Samaritan and the Mayo Clinic.
They laid out their case in coldly understandable terms, writing, for example:
"As of 19 April 2010, there are 51 AHCCCS patients on the liver transplant
wait list with Hepatitis C. Of those patients waiting, approximately 17 of those patients will die this year if transplantation is not a covered service. Based on the current average reimbursement rate for transplantation ($149,670), the estimated cost savings to AHCCCS will be $2,544,390."
That is the short-term saving.
It is difficult to determine the long-term cost to the state of caring for patients who slowly wither away. It could take years.
The doctors ran to same numbers for heart-transplant patients, lung-transplant patients, pancreas-transplant patients.
The legislators cut the services.
And Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill into law, eliminating AHCCCS coverage for the operations.
"I can't work anymore and we ran out of coverage a while back," he told me. "It's terrible needing help. It's not what I wanted. But when you run out of money, what can you do? If I don't get a transplant, I guess the state won't have to pay for me or worry about me until I walk into an emergency room close to dying. They can't turn me away then."
People like Charlie Thomas, a transplant social worker, have been dealing with the threat of these cuts for years, always managing to stave them off. Until this time.
This time, legislators needed a quick fix.
"The people who benefit from these transplant services are people who were working, paying taxes, being good citizens and then got sick and lost everything. They're us," Thomas told me.
Still, the services were cut.
The transplant physicians and hospitals are hoping they'll have a second chance to make their case before the new rules go into effect in July. Before people die who could otherwise be saved. They believe they have the scientific data and the economics on their side.
One of those hoping to get the Legislature to reconsider is Leo Corbett, a former state senator and one-time Republican candidate for governor who knows what it means to make tough budget decisions. He's also a heart-transplant recipient.
"I'm not sure that legislators got all the information they needed to make an informed decision," he told me. "It seemed to have been in the hands of the bean counters rather than the policy makers. I believe this can be resolved in a fiscally sound manner that still serves the need of these patients. I hope so, anyway. I believe, like a lot of people, that a society or a state is judged by how it treats its poor people. For most of these folks, the illness took all they had."
Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.
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