Check out this video where an Oregon woman suffering from lung cancer was notified via letter by the state-run Oregon Health Plan that while it would not cover her chemo treatment, it would pay for doctor assisted suicide.
Some good quotes from the video
"I'm not ready, I'm not ready to die. I've got things I'd still like to do."
"Who do you you guys think you are? You know to say that you'll pay for my, um, dying, but you won't pay to help me possibly live longer."
"The State has a financial intensive to offer death instead of life. Chemotherapy drugs like Tarceva cost $4000 month, drugs for assisted suicide cost less than $100"
"We're looking at today's treatment, 2008 treatment, but we're using 1993 standards. When the Oregon health plan was created it was 15 years ago and there were not all of the Chemotherapy drugs that there are today."
I can't wait for a single-payer, Government-controlled health care plan. It's going to be so awesome!
Before you argue that private insurance is no better, I've found out that FDA has approved Tarceva for patients where other chemo has failed. And that most insurance companies follow FDA protocol. Most except for government run Oregon State that is.
2 comments:
There will always be difficult choices, whether insurance is provided by the government or by private companies. One example of a public plan denying a treatment does not make the many examples of private insurers doing the exact same thing disappear. Not to mention the millions without any insurance at all.
At least with public insurance you can create public pressure to change a policy, using media investigations exactly like this, a lot more effectively than you ever could with private companies. They would be accountable to voters instead of profits.
I disagree Gene, here is a situation where the government plan is 15 years behind the curve with regard to policy and reaction to the current realities in medicine.
A bicameral legislature is by design slow and inefficient, and government bureaucracies never change without being forced to do so.
I have no confidence in their ability to react to the needs of the consumer. That is what the private sector does best.
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