Family of dying girl seeks direct donor for lung transplant
Family members of a 10-year-old Pennsylvania girl in desperate need of a lung transplant said Sunday that they are devastated that the nation’s top health official did not intervene with an immediate policy change that could save the dying child’s life.
In response, the parents of Sarah Murnaghan, who has end-stage cystic fibrosis, are appealing directly for a lung donation from any family who loses a loved one -- soon.There is a picture of the little girl with tubes running to her nose that accompanies the story. She looks very sick, my heart went out to her and her folks.
What the parents want in this case isn't money for the operation. They want a Washington bureaucrat to change a policy so that their daughter will have a better chance to get a donor lung. That or they need a huge favor from everyone who reads the story. IF YOUR KID dies they NEED YOU to PLEASE NAME SARAH as the person to get your dead child's lung.
How do you like them apples? To save a little girls life you have to get a bureaucrat to do something or convince a perfect stranger in their moment of deepest loss to let someone carve up their own child so you can have the piece that might save yours.
This is what life is going to look like under Obama (lack of) Care. Need something done? Hope you got some pull with someone setting in the right cubical in DC. In order to "save" us from the evil of having to use money to get medical care we now have to use "policy" or "pull" to get medical care.
Imagine for a minute that instead of needing a favor to save their little girl, the Murnaghan's needed money. Imagine its a lot of money say $250,000. How long do you think it would take them to get the money? IF they only had half the surgeons fee do you think he'd refuse them and make them put the lung on layaway? Assume for the moment that they have to have ALL THE CASH up front. There is less than $50 in my wallet right now, that's all the cash I have between me and next pay day. Sarah can have it all. What about you? All you have is a $10 would you give it? I'd like to think you would.
I believe that Americans would pony up $250,000 to save a little girls life and do it faster than any government official would or could. That's whats happened until now. America has enjoyed a high level of medical care BECAUSE we paid for it. People form countries that have "free" health care often came to the US to get treatment. Not only did we have what we needed, we had extra capacity for others. When someone truly needed something they couldn't pay for, they generally got it anyway.
Your not going to have that anymore. Now your going to need a bureaucrat to give you permission to keep breathing. That bureaucrat isn't going to be a kind hearted social worker, or medical professional. Under Obama (lack of) Care that bureaucrat is going to be an IRS case worker. I'm sure they will be just as impartial, professional and understanding with your medical care as they are with Tea Party organizations.
I think you are missing the point. There is no "extra organ" laying about on a government warehouse shelf waiting for a bureaucratic release document. The little girl wants a change in the rule (or her parents do) so that she can get those organs INSTEAD OF SOMEONE ELSE. You don't know who that someone else is because that someone isn't complaining. That person will never know that his/her life was stolen away when a Bureaucrat arbitrarily snatched away an organ from Him/her to give to the little girl instead. He/She will just die as thousands of people do every year when they are waiting for organ transplants.
ReplyDeleteBottom line: If your continued life depends on someone else's death, then you don't have a right to live. The natural course of your life is designed to be short. Circumventing that will take a miracle and you don't have a right to one of those either.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Obamacare; the transplant allocation system has been in place for many years, long before Obama even took office. So to say that it will look this way under Obamacare disregards the fact that it already looked this way before Obamacare.
ReplyDeleteThe system in place was intended to ensure that everyone would have a fair shot at receiving a transplant, not just those who could easily buy it. Without it, the richest people would be snatching up all the available transplants, and poorer folks would have zero chance of getting one.
The policy change that Sarah's parents were requesting has to do with how this system allocates organs between adults and children. There may be underlying merit to the reason for requesting the change, but I'm sure it has more to do with her parents' emotions than with logic and reason. Regardless, as the Professor pointed out, changing the policy to get Sarah a transplant would have the effect of taking it away from somebody else whose family would be just as sad at the loss of their loved one, too.
I feel sad for the girl and her family, but letting emotion dictate policy is just...bad policy.
Res, here's a thought experiment for you:
ReplyDeleteOne of your children is also very close to death awaiting a lung transplant. Your child is on the list above Sarah because (s)he is even closer to death than Sarah is.
You'd give up the $50 in your wallet to help Sarah...but would you give up your own child? Because that's what her parents want that bureuacrat to do.
bureaucrat, dammit.
ReplyDeletePH and WB,
ReplyDeleteYou both make rational and intelligent points regarding the specific example of Sarah. I thought that my first paragraph preemptively covered your points. Since I’m the one writing, I realize that its my responsibility to be clear in the point I’m attempting to make and I failed to do that.
My thought process was this:
Medical care is a scarce resource.
A criteria will be used to decide who gets what.
The old criteria was money.
The new criteria is bureaucratic process.
The zinger was that now the IRS will be deciding who gets what.
I got caught up in the emotional aspect of a current event at the expense of making my point and focused on sensationalism rather than clear communication. I put the example ahead of the issue and made a mess of the whole thing.
My bad.
One of my reasons for doing the blog is an exercise in writing skills. Being correct is beneficial, thank you.
That's Ok. I mostly don't read what other people write, but instead just listen to the words in my head that i think they were going to write, based on their headline. Then I rant about that.
ReplyDeleteIt works pretty good so far.
I understand the reasoning behind it, but even the clarified explanation makes some sweeping generalizations that simply are not true.
ReplyDeleteTake a look at the first statement: Medical care is a scarce resource.
This would be better stated as: Some medical care is a scarce resource
Examples of scarce medical care would be transplants, as you pointed out. However, the reason for the scarcity in that case is the supply of organs, not the facilities or personnel to carry them out.
Another example will be physicians, where a shortage is projected to be experienced in the near future because more people will have health insurance and will use it. This is an instance that can be blamed on Obamacare.
As for the rest of the claims:
A criteria will be used to decide who gets what.
The old criteria was money.
The new criteria is bureaucratic process.
Yes and no, but largely no. Somebody with money who wants to get plastic surgery will still be able to get plastic surgery with their own money. This will be no different under Obamacare, since most health insurance plans don't cover elective procedures in the first place.
Much of the rest of it is going to be subject to the laws of supply and demand, just as it is now. For instance, it's more likely that a pediatrician would want to live and work in an area which has a lot of children...so grandparents who live in a largely geriatric community and are raising their grandchildren are going to naturally have fewer choices than someone in a more youthful community would have. This also cannot be attributed to Obamacare.
The only real relevance Obamacare has to your main point is that bureaucrats will be deciding reimbursement rates. Again, they are already doing this for Medicare, so this is an expansion of what was already in place before Obama.
This also does not equate to denying a procedure; again, you will always be able to pay for your medical care yourself. We went over this once before, IIRC.
WB,
ReplyDeleteI would challenge your idea of health care. Elective procedures like plastic surgery generally are not considered “health care” with most folks. I recognize that in certain situations like reconstructive surgery after an accident or perhaps some of the procedures to reverse morbid obesity that they can be/are.
I will concede your point and agree that supermodels will be able to get their butt’s tucked and boobs bigger because they can pay for it. I will also concede the point that there will be a black market for cash only medical services.
This also does not equate to denying a procedure; again, you will always be able to pay for your medical care yourself.
Except for when you can’t pay because you don’t have the money and the reason you don’t have any money has to do with the impact of Obama Care on the economy and on your compensation.
I was addressing that aspect of sweeping generalizations in your assertions. The fact that somebody can get health care through their own means disputes the assertion that all health care determinations will be made by a bureaucrat. That simply will not be the case.
ReplyDeleteIf you can't pay, you can't pay...nor could you pay before Obamacare, either, as the economic downturn started long before Obamacare was passed.
And if you're going to delineate between those who were poor before Obamacare and those who became poor afterward, well...that's some mighty fine hair-splitting you'd be doing.
Look, I'm against Obamacare, too. But there's simply no point ascribing negative aspects to it that don't actually exist; it's bad enough as it is without making more stuff up about it.
"I will also concede the point that there will be a black market for cash only medical services."
Why black market? Why will it be necessary to go underground if you want to pay cash, as this example of yourself you spoke of earlier.
As I mentioned up above, all the bureaucrats affected was how much you had to pay. They did not prevent you from paying in cash, nor did they prevent the doctor from taking it. If you found something in the Obamacare legislation that precludes this type of transaction from occurring anymore, I would love to have it pointed out to me.
Your point(s) are well taken
ReplyDelete