Intolerable cruelty: Kansas Medicaid leaves elderly to die without care

[applegrove]

By Chris Reeves at Daily Kos

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/22/1726888/-Intolerable-cruelty-Kansas-Medicaid-leaves-elderly-to-die-without-care

"SNIP...........

The situation in Kansas has hit a point where the state seems to be creating a policy of stiffing medical facilities rather than pay on benefits, putting care providers in a difficult position.

Morgan Bell, a social worker at Stormont Vail Hospital in Topeka, told a KanCare legislative oversight committee last month that she was recently looking for a nursing home for a patient who had fallen into a coma.

“It came to my attention that even the couple of facilities that would make exceptions for KanCare-pending applicants are not able to take these patients if they have a limited life expectancy, solely because they will not receive payment if the patient dies before the application is approved,” Bell said.

Kansas has been concerned about this problem for some time, but the concern hasn’t been enough to correct it


............SNIP"

[elleng]

1. Brownbackistan's 'triumph'

amazes the civilized world.

[guillaumeb]

2. Supply side economics, combined with GOP values.

Where is the corporate media?

[MFM008]

3. Compassionate conservatives...

Drop dead.

[greymattermom]

4. Put them in paliative care

i.e. starve them to death.

[applegrove]

7. That hurts to someone who has been through it with family. My mom was

given as much food as she would take. She told me a month before she died that she didn't want to still be here. It was heartbreaking.

[Hekate]

9. Why would you even say that? Terminally ill people hit a point where they refuse food...

This is end-stage and their bodies know it. They turn their heads away from a spoon. A feeding tube fails to restore or maintain health. FFS. End. Done.

Palliative care is the very definition of "making the patient comfortable." Where does "srarvation" fit into that scenario?

[applegrove]

10. Thanks. It is heartbreaking and i have would not choose paliative care

for myself or panyone else if assisted suicide is available. But what they said was not necessary.

[AJT]

5. We will all be Kansas soon enough...

[TomSlick]

6. Ebeneezer lives.

They are trying to decrease "the surplus population." Truly wicked people.

[dlk]

8. It's Republicans' Selective Euthanasia - the Headlines Should Be Screaming

The Republicans are intentionally killing Americans who are too old, too sick or too poor to fight back.