From THINK PROGRESS:
As ThinkProgress has reported, Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) and the GOP-controlled state House have turned a blind eye to the plight of 98 Arizona patients in desperate need of organ transplants. Since Brewer enacted painful cuts to the state’s Medicaid program in October, two Arizonans unable to pay for the transplants they needed passed away. After months of appeals and protests, it appears Brewer has finally agreed to set aside a $151 million “uncompensated-care pool to pay health-care providers for ‘life-saving’ procedures, including transplants.”
However, state House Republicans remain vigilant in their anti-human life campaign. They are refusing to let measures to restore funding for organ transplants advance because, as the state House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Kavanagh (R) explained, “not enough lives would be saved to warrant restoring millions in budget cuts” for the transplants.
But as Brewer and the GOP-led legislature waffle over the value of human lives, two more people — including 23-year-old leukemia patient Courtney Parham — join the 98 others standing before the Brewer death panel. Because the state has so far refused to pay for her transplant, Courtney’s family “must raise somewhere between $400-$800 thousand dollars for a transplant, or their daughter will die.”
…snip…
Like all states, Arizona is facing hard financial times, but this is a question of priorities. While Courtney’s life is on the line, Brewer eagerly signed tax cuts for businesses into law last week — cuts that will cost Arizona $538 million by 2018. Yet the governor has dragged her feet in offering the mere $1.36 million needed to save Courtney and her cohort’s lives, and she has consistently ignored 26 possible funding solutions from a member of her own party.
For Brewer, the fact that Courtney’s plight is forced to take a backseat to business tax cuts is “sad but necessary.”
(Video at THINK PROGRESS link)
I don’t want to imagine that Arizona could ever reelect Brewer in 2012.
but they will. the people of arizona are apparently as bigoted and hateful as their governor and most of their elected officials.
My bad, they are stuck with the organ thief until 2014. Plenty to time to let poor Democrat voters die…
She has the perfect face for Pro-Death policies.
It’s one thing to say we don’t have the money to help you. It’s quite another to let people die at the same time that you’re excusing corporations from making an actual contribution like the rest of America.
she couldn’t have made the business tax cuts a million dollars less? what would that have meant to each business, a few cents? she’s a disgusting pig. by the way, this is the original pic that i used for the pig. i bet she didn’t have to pay a dime to have her gnarly arm treated and put in a cast.
Pigs have cold blood. She’s a reptile.
she’s not even good enough to be a reptile. you’re right, she’s not a pig. she’s pigshit. she’s the most contemptible excuse for a human being there is. she’s vile. she’s as ugly inside as she is on the outside.
It appears that the Death Panels are real. They consist of politicians choosing tax cuts for the wealthy over everyone else. These people are fucking despicable.
so what does she do? she blames the media, of course. these are her words, out of her ugly pig mouth (she was speaking to business leaders, of course):
I believe that the media has blown that totally completely out of proportion. It’s an unfortunate thing that people have passed away, that the two people that have died, but I do believe that it wasn’t because of the funding at this particular time.
big business gets recovery, people? not so much. Arizona needs a governor transplant.
i think the voters need a brain transplant. they vote for the most vile people there.
It’s just a matter of priorities. That 900 foot tall statue of Ronnie Reagan ain’t going to build itself you know.
yeah, let’s kill a few more sick people so we can build a hospital and name it after st. ronnie.
Sad to say, I wonder how many times this scene will replay itself in other states.
this and the crap going on in wisconsin are the opening salvos. we’re going to see this in every state with a rethug governor.
Including Michigan, although the governor here is looking good by comparison so far, which is damning with faint praise.
he might be waiting to see how much hosni walker gets away with in wisconsin (and rick scott in floriduhhh, who is even more off the wall than the others).
And the rest of the Union busters you mentioned a couple of nights ago.
they’re just dipping their toes into the water to see how much they’ll get away with.
The Governor simply cannot afford transplants. She needs money for her 5C Arizona Centennial Museum
hello dick,
welcome to the raisin!
i hadn’t heard about the museum before, but i just googled. unbelievable. i wonder how many of her cronies stand to make money from that fiasco.