Arizona Budget Cuts Boot Patients From Transplant List

(Dec. 3) -- Anger is growing in Arizona after the state cut critical funding to low-income transplant patients and left dozens of gravely ill people scrambling to raise the funds for the lifesaving procedures on their own.

Francisco Felix, who has hepatitis C, could have received the liver transplant he needs last week, when a dying family friend offered to donate her liver. But state budget cuts to Medicaid meant Arizona would no longer help pay for a transplant for the 32-year-old father of four. So when his family couldn't come up with $200,000 in time, the liver went to someone else.

"The liver is gone because we don't have the money. That's why we lost this opportunity. But we have hope that something good is going to come," Flor Felix, Francisco's wife, told KSAZ/Fox10.

The cuts, approved earlier this year by the Arizona legislature and Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, went into effect Oct. 1. The reductions mean low-income patients will no longer receive lung transplants, liver transplants for hepatitis C patients or certain bone marrow transplants unless they fund the procedures themselves. The new policy is saving the state about $4.5 million per year, according to The New York Times.

But many say the human cost of the slashed funding is far higher. According to the Times, about 100 sick people are affected by the cuts. "Something needs to be done," University of Arizona transplant specialist Dr. Emmanuel Katsanis told the Times. "There's no doubt that people aren't going to make it because of this decision. What do you tell someone? You need a transplant but you have to raise the money?"

The death of Mark Price, a 38-year-old father of six, has only amplified anger over the cuts. Price made headlines in Arizona last month when the state refused to pay for his bone marrow transplant. Although an anonymous donor later pledged the $250,000 for the procedure, Price died over the weekend of complications from chemotherapy.

Price's physician, Dr. Jeffrey Schriber, told the Arizona Republic that Price's death wasn't related to the budget cuts because his body was too weak to undergo surgery. But critics of the policy say it's only a matter of time before a sick patient dies because he or she can't afford a transplant.

The uproar has lawmakers pointing the finger at one another. "We made it very clear at the time of the vote that this was a death sentence," state Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor, a Democrat, told the Times. "This is not a luxury item. We're not talking about cosmetic surgery."

Brewer said her heart went out to the Price family but called the cuts necessary. "The bottom line is the state only has so much money and we can only provide so much optional types of care and those were one of the options that we had taken liberty to discard, to dismiss," she said Nov. 19, according to The Associated Press. Some Republican lawmakers, however, have hinted that the legislature may take a second look at the issue.