2nd Arizona Patient Dies After State Budget Cuts Deny Transplant

I’m sorry, but the GOP hypocrisy is turning deadly.

Isn’t this the Party that made so much noise about “Death Panels” during the Health Care Reform Debate?  Looks like they are the ones who ultimately instituted them…

PHOENIX — A second person denied transplant coverage by Arizona under a state budget cut has died, with this death “most likely” resulting from the coverage reduction, a hospital spokeswoman said Wednesday.

University Medical Center spokeswoman Jo Marie Gellerman said the patient died Dec. 28 at another medical facility after earlier being removed from UMC’s list for a liver transplant needed because of hepatitis C.

Gellerman cited medical privacy requirements in declining to release any information about the patient.

Arizona reduced Medicaid coverage for transplants on Oct. 1 under cuts included to help close a shortfall in the state budget enacted last spring.

Officials at the Tucson, Ariz., hospital said the patient’s death “most likely” resulted from Arizona’s scaling back coverage for transplants, she said.

It’s impossible to say with 100 percent certainty whether the patient would have died anyway, Gellerman said, “but we do know that his condition has gotten more severe since he was taken off the list.”

More from the Huffington Post:   2nd Arizona Patient Dies After State Budget Cuts Deny Transplant.