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Someone lives and someone dies


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From what I remember from when I was working in health care with transplant patients, there were two main factors on who got organs.

 

a) Seniority on the list.

b) Condition of the patient.

 

Not sure if any of that has changed. I have absolutely no clue as to this case. But, if she was behind 40 people because of seniority but her condition become a lot worse than theirs then she could be bumped ahead of them.

This, to my knowledge, is basically correct.

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She decided against suspending the rules of the policy on the age of somebody receiving an adult lung transplant.

And who said that she had the power to suspend the rules?

Quote from the article:

She can’t qualify for an adult lung transplant until the age of 12, according to federal regulations, but Sebelius has the authority to waive that rule on her behalf.

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Quote from the article:

She can’t qualify for an adult lung transplant until the age of 12, according to federal regulations, but Sebelius has the authority to waive that rule on her behalf.

The Department of Health and Human Services disagrees but I'm sure that this opinion writer from the Washington Examiner has a firm grasp of the legality of waiving this regulation. :P

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Quote from the article:

She can’t qualify for an adult lung transplant until the age of 12, according to federal regulations, but Sebelius has the authority to waive that rule on her behalf.

The Department of Health and Human Services disagrees but I'm sure that this opinion writer from the Washington Examiner has a firm grasp of the legality of waiving this regulation. :P

So the question would be why was this congressman asking her to do it if she had no authority?

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“I would suggest, sir, that, again, this is an incredibly agonizing situation where someone lives and someone dies,” Sebelius replied. “The medical evidence and the transplant doctors who are making the rule — and have had the rule in place since 2005 making a delineation between pediatric and adult lungs, because lungs are different that other organs — that it’s based on the survivability [chances].”

 

Why wouldn't she say..."Sir, I don't have the authority to do that"?

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“I would suggest, sir, that, again, this is an incredibly agonizing situation where someone lives and someone dies,” Sebelius replied. “The medical evidence and the transplant doctors who are making the rule — and have had the rule in place since 2005 making a delineation between pediatric and adult lungs, because lungs are different that other organs — that it’s based on the survivability [chances].”

 

Why wouldn't she say..."Sir, I don't have the authority to do that"?

 

Because death panels.

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Because death panels.

 

I know your comment was to cause a reaction, but, after reading the part in the bill that some people claim has "death panels", I don't believe it does. So, your comment has nothing to do with me.

 

But, to the point about her not having authority or if she does, that is where my question came from.

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Carl and St Paul - looks like this is going towards chicken or egg . Carl, where did you find the Dept of HHS disagrees wt Seb having the authority to make the decision to over rule the regs?

You're most likely right. My original comment on this topic said that there wasn't much to go off of from the article. I made my comments based on what I read. I may have come off argumentative but was not the intention

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“I would suggest, sir, that, again, this is an incredibly agonizing situation where someone lives and someone dies,” Sebelius replied. “The medical evidence and the transplant doctors who are making the rule — and have had the rule in place since 2005 making a delineation between pediatric and adult lungs, because lungs are different that other organs — that it’s based on the survivability [chances].”

 

Why wouldn't she say..."Sir, I don't have the authority to do that"?

 

She's the Health Secretary being asked to intervene in a situation she shouldn't be involved in. It's an inappropriate question to even ask of the Health Secretary, and it was asked of her in the middle of contentious debate over Obamacare - hardly a place for a desperate plea for a child's life. Barletta has voted to repeal Obamacare and has been a strident voice against it. I'm not about to believe he's suddenly, out of the kindness of his heart, supporting this child's life when the situation just conveniently happens to promote a political position he holds.

 

Some experts agree that the lung allocation policy may need to be revisited; it has been for kidney and liver transplants. But they say no snap decisions should be made because of the media glare.

 

“Should Sebelius step in and do something? No. She doesn’t have all the facts,” said NYU bioethicist Art Caplan. Acting under pressure from a media savvy family “or the noisiest person in line” is bad policy, he added.

 

In recent years, younger kids have been given greater priority for kidney and liver transplants, Caplan said, and that is in-keeping with the desire of donors that their organs provide as much life as they can. A transplant into an older patient might not provide the same number of “life years,” he said, an important consideration. But whether that’s in order for lungs as well depends on the actual science of transplanting adult lungs into children, not just the instinct to save a child.

 

Caplan noted one reason that may give Sebelius pause: by moving someone up the list, someone else goes down. One child saved could mean another child dies. Sebelius, he noted, “doesn’t have all the information.”

 

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