Is Arizona’s Governor Brewer really evil?
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When the worst has been said about Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s racist immigration law, her disgusting lies about illegal immigrants, and her state’s pathetically inadequate gun regulation, many often forget about Brewer’s most despicable policy—implementing death panels. Inexplicably, this story hasn’t caused mass uproar or received very much attention. But everyone must know exactly what’s taking place in our country. And there is no excusing Brewer’s evil policy and persistent obscurantism.
In early 2010 she and Arizona’s Republican-controlled legislature slashed funding for certain Medicaid transplants. The cuts went into effect in October, denying 98 mortally sick patients, known as the Arizona 98, who were supposed to receive transplants. Two have already died. Francisco Felix, who has two years to live, was slated to receive a liver transplant from a friend, but because of Brewer’s actions that liver went to someone else, forcing Felix to search for $200,000 for the down payment on his operation.
The “explanation” is arguably as sinister as the policy itself. Although Brewer has habitually fled from inquisitive reporters, charging one such journalist of asking her an “unfair” question, and refused to grant interviews to anchors like Anderson Cooper, she defended herself on Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren show in December. As one might expect, she employed a massive dose of Fox News logic—a blend of outright lies, half-truths and staggering hypocrisy.
On the face of it you might presume Brewer enacted these draconian measures because she had no choice—as she has argued, Arizona’s budget hole is too huge to accommodate expensive surgeries. And you would be wrong. Rep. Steven Daglas, Republican from Illinois, sent the Governor a list of 26 different ways to come up with the mere $1 million plus, which, combined with federal matching funds, would pay for the transplants. Options include allotting a portion of the annual $8.5 million in Arizona’s unclaimed lottery prize winnings, allocating much of the more than $2 million settlement with AIG, and cutting Arizona State University’s unnecessary and bloated out-of-state travel appropriations.
For some reason, Brewer considers these resources more important than saving the lives of her citizens. Amazingly, she called the transplants “optional” procedures—a “Cadillac program” that other states do not provide. According to The Wall Street Journal, nearly every state does in fact cover these transplants, and one of the Arizona 98 is considering moving to Colorado to obtain a liver transplant. Brewer’s other favorite fabrication is that the procedures do not consistently save or significantly extend lives. In the Fox interview she claimed that bone marrow transplants are almost always unsuccessful, but in truth these procedures succeed 42 percent of the time according to the doctor of Mark Price, who needed such a transplant and died before he could get one.
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What is amazing to me about this hack of a governor are way too many to list right now. She managed to find more than 50 million for her buddies in the prison industry(out of stimulus monies) and cannot find a little over a million for dying people. Yeah, if there is such a thing as evil, this woman and her band of fellows like Russell Pearce, the AZ president of the state senate, oh yeah they are evil alright.
Brewer has a lot to answer for but I am not sure that her “death panels” are any more real than those imagined by Sarah Palin.