By Wesley J Smith
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| Wesley Smith |
Toward that end, Oklahoma’s governor just signed into law a bill that outlaws such invidious and bigoted discrimination. From HB 2587:
The Legislature finds and declares that:
- Physical and mental disabilities, age or chronic illness should in no way diminish a person’s right to life, human dignity and equal access to medical care;
- Historically, persons with disabilities, advanced age or chronic illness have faced discrimination in the health care system, including the denial of access to life-sustaining care;
- Such discrimination is inconsistent with our society’s commitment to human dignity and the full inclusion of persons with disabilities throughout society;
An agency shall be prohibited from developing or employing a dollars-per-quality adjusted life year, or similar measure that discounts the value of a life because of an individual’s disability, including age or chronic illness, as a threshold to establish what type of health care is cost effective or recommended.
An agency shall be prohibited from utilizing such adjusted life year, or similar measure, as a threshold to determine coverage, reimbursement, incentive programs or utilization management decisions, whether it comes from within the agency or from any third party.More of this please, the sooner the better! Considering how shamefully and lethally New York and some other states treated the elderly residing in long-term care facilities during the worst days of the COVID-19 crisis, it is very clear that these laws are desperately needed.
It's a step in the right direction, in one sense, that Oklahoma has banned health care rationing based on "quality of life". It will only be a half-measure, however, unless Oklahoma also effectively addresses the factors driving the practice. Those factors will include such issues as inadequate funding, under-staffing, inefficient administration, etc. These and other factors contribute to a mentality that is a reaction to an environment of chronic shortage, the pressure to always find ways to do more with less. In a for-profit health care system, this mentality will be endemic. In an adequately supplied and funded system there is no pressure to "ration" care.
ReplyDeleteI live in Canada now, but I was born and raised in Oklahoma. I’m glad to hear that the tradition of caring for others, whatever their circumstances, still stands.
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