Oregon's Death Panels

From MAInfo (modified)

The powerful story of Barbara Wagner demonstrates why this discussion is of utmost importance. When Barbara’s lung cancer reappeared during the spring of 2008 her oncologist recommended aggressive treatment with Tarceva, a new chemotherapy. However, Oregon’s state run health plan denied the potentially life altering drug because they did not feel it was "cost-effective." Instead, the State plan offered to pay for either hospice care or physician-assisted suicide.

In stunned disbelief you may ask, "How can this be? This happens in Europe. I’ve heard stories of Britain’s National Health Service delaying intervention until the patient dies or reports of physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands. But in America?"

The answer is simple. Oregon state officials controlled the process of healthcare decision-making—not Barbara and her physician. Chemotherapy would cost the state $4,000 every month she remained alive; the drugs for physician-assisted suicide held a one-time expense of less than $100. Barbara’s treatment plan boiled down to accounting. To cover chemotherapy state policy demanded a five percent patient survival rate at five years. As a new drug, Tarceva did not meet this dispassionate criterion. To Oregon, Barbara was no longer a patient; she had become a "negative economic unit."

In 1994 Barbara’s state established the Oregon Health Plan to give its working poor access to basic healthcare while limiting costs by "prioritizing care." In 1997 Oregon legalized physician-assisted suicide to offer "death with dignity" to patients who chose to die without further medical treatment. In the end, the State secured the power to ration healthcare in order to control its financial risk, even if that meant replacing a patient’s chance to live with the choice of how to die.

When queried about withholding Barbara’s treatment, Dr. Walter Shaffer, a spokesman for Oregon’s Division of Medical Assistance Programs, explained the policy this way, "We can't cover everything for everyone. Taxpayer dollars are limited for publicly funded programs. We try to come up with policies that provide the most good for the most people."

Dr. Som Saha, chairman of the commission that sets policy for the Oregon Health Plan, Oregon's Death Panel, echoed Shaffer, "If we invest thousands and thousands of dollars in one person's days to weeks, we are taking away those dollars from someone [else]."

If you think this can't happen in America, think again. The "Death Panel" model is alive and well in Oregon, and will soon be nation wide.

This, my friends, is "liberal compassion."

Death Panels Are Out ... No Wait; They're In

Ever since Sarah Palin's Facebook post about Obama's Death Panels, the Democrats have been scrambling. (Actually, before then, but even moreso, since.) The first response, of course, was to make out Sarah Palin to be some kind of nutjob. The problem is that her post had an air of truth to it that resonated with some folks.

So the Democrats caved. Kind of.

They decided to take out the "Death Panels." Those death panels that never existed in the first place? Yeah, those.

They removed the language from the bill requiring senior citizens over age 65 to have a mandatory discussion with a counsellor or doctor regarding end of life issues.

The problem is, this isn't the language in the bill Sarah Palin was referring to when she coined the term "Death Panels."

I actually don't have a problem with discussions of "end of life issues." Even though some have complained about this provision in the bill, the intent was to give seniors information about living wills, nursing care, hospice and other issues that we all may have to deal with when we get older. I have issues with the word "mandatory" in that provision, and there is also the likelihood that when implemented, things like doctor-assisted suicide would also be in the discussion. But aside from that, removing this provision actually made a bad bill even worse, in my opinion.

Now, however, the democrats have removed the "death panel" issue from the political discussion.

The problem is that Sarah Palin was more concerned about language in the bill that suggested that our health care options might be more limited if we had a poor prognosis, language that suggested rationing (without actually using that term), and also language from administration officials that suggested that after the bill was implemented the bureaucracy would be set up in such a way that terminal patients, very elderly and even children with diseases carrying a poor prognosis might not have access to live-saving or life-enhancing treatments because of economic considerations.

The logical assumption is that if these economic choices have to be made, somebody is going to make them, and more than likely that "somebody" would probably a panel or a committee of people who will evaluate, not on an individual basis, but more likely on a diagnosis/prognosis basis, who gets treatment and who doesn't.

Hence, a "Death Panel."

The bottom line is that while the Democrats are now going to go out and talk about how they listened to "the people" and took out the "death panels" that they denied were there in the first place, they really didn't do that. Death panels are still in.