Oregon Uber Alles

One of the criticisms of the town hall protests is that the people are more scared than anything else. The poor dears simply don't understand what a federal health care system will do or not do, and so they are lashing out. That's the progressive's rationalization. However, the US does have some experience with state-run health care. If you knew what was going on there, you would start ranting at town halls too.The Nightmare of Rationing in Oregon

Two cases of “public option” administrators rejecting patient requests for lifesaving or life-extending drugs (and instead offering to fund those patients’ assisted suicides) reached the mainstream media in the last two weeks. This has caused critics of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul proposal to look to Oregon for clues about what a national health system would bring.

The picture is not pretty. Oregon, the only state to allow assisted suicide (via the 1997 “Death With Dignity Law”), has used its public health care “option” as a pretext for enacting an official policy of trading lives that bureaucrats determine to be “expendable” for monetary saving by the government.

The problem does not end with the state government either condoning or encouraging suicide. Rather, it comes as a result of the public option’s bureaucratic masters, who have made Oregon’s government the first in the world
to officially prioritize treatments for the express purpose of rationing
care.

The manner in which treatments are prioritized - by a "rationing board," no less - is almost too silly to be believed. Not only are people with medical training not making these decisions; it is obvious that a treatment will be ranked higher if it's politically correct or if it's been in the news lately.

The state rationing board ranked abortion 41^st overall in state-funding priority, meaning the bureaucrats who designed the priority structure in this “public option” program determined that the use of taxpayer funds for abortion is more important (and more medically necessary) than covering injuries to major blood vessels (ranked 86^th), surgery to repair injured internal organs (88), a “deep wound to the neck” or open fracture of the larynx or trachea (91), or a ruptured aortic aneurysm (306).

Also of note is the fact that treatments for esophageal, liver, and pancreatic cancers take up priority slots 337 through 339, with treatment for stroke at 340 — all over 300 places behind obesity (8), depression (9), and asthma (11).

And, you're not going to believe this, but "end of life care" is strictly limited to palliative care. You will literally be denied funding for services that might improve your condition. Good thing Oregon has an assisted suicide law! It dovetails quite nicely with this:

End-of-life care — both for the elderly and for those with terminal illnesses — has stolen attention from the state’s rationing program, and with good reason. As part of the Beaver State’s focus on prevention over treatment, and of monetary savings over care, the bureaucrats responsible for Oregon’s rationing regime adopted a policy of comfort over life extension in dealing with both end-of-life scenarios and chronic illnesses.

While coverage for “comfort/palliative care” — pain medication, wheelchair issues, in-home care, and “services under [the] Oregon Death With Dignity Act,” to name a few listed in the rationing guidelines – is provided by the government-run public option, the OHSC expressly forbids patients from obtaining treatments that may actually improve their conditions. Under the rationing directive, chronic and presumed-terminal patients are barred from receiving “chemotherapy or surgical interventions with the primary intent to prolong life or alter disease progression” and “medical equipment or supplies which will not benefit the patient for a reasonable length of time.”

But don't mention death panels! Hey! Did we mention that Sarah Palin is getting divorced? And that she's really really stupid. And her career is so over. That's what we hear in the mainstream press, at least. Too bad they can't be bothered to report on the sort of rationing that is going on in the US right now.