After comment from interested parties [special interest groups, political and business], the state's health program for low-income people has re-ranked treatment for various diseases and conditions, currently from 1 to 680, in order of 'priority'.
The health care dollars available determine which priorities are met. As program costs have grown, the list of covered procedures has become shorter. Surprisingly, between 2002 and 2009 there was a fairly radical reordering of priorities.
A great many life-saving procedures that ranked high in 2002, such as treatment for Type 1 diabetes, have been relegated to a much lower position in 2009, while procedures that are only tangentially related to life and death have climbed to the top:
- Bariatric surgery for people with Type II diabetes and a 35 or greater Body Mass Index (BMI) number is ranked 33rd.
- This means that the rationing board thinks that stomach surgery to control obesity is more important than surgery to repair injured internal organs (88), a closed hip fracture (89), or a hernia showing symptoms of obstruction or strangulation (176).
- Abortions rank 41st, indicating that the state considers using public money for abortions more important than treating an ectopic pregnancy (43), gonococcal infections and other sexually transmitted diseases (56), or an infection or hemorrhage resulting from a miscarriage (68).
Various interest groups have spent the last seven years reordering the political* priorities embodied in the list.
[Everything government does becomes politicized. Smoke? Too bad. Ride a motorcycle? That's a problem. Eat too much - or maybe just too much red meat...? Skydive? Ski? ... You're not getting too old are you?...
We don't want government run health care.]
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