First they were mad that the Government would interfere in healthcare decisions by setting up death panels. Now they're mad because HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has declined to get involved in a medical decision involving a lung transplant for a 10 year old girl.
Sebelius, at a budget hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee, told lawmakers yesterday that she prefers a process set by “medical science and by medical experts” rather than politicians and policy makers.
The background on this story is that there is a 10 year old girl in PA with cystic fibrosis awaiting a lung transplant without which she will die in 3 to 5 weeks, and an adult lung is not medically suitable for anyone under 12 years of age. The girl's family has created a lot of
publicity seeking the rules be changed for them, with a petition and social media campaign, and have politicized the issue by involving their Congressmen, who have petitioned Sebelius to waive the rules for them.
Headlines are now framing this as a '10 year old girl being 'denied' a transplant', as if there were a donor (adult or pediatric) ready and available for her, but bureuacracy is preventing her from getting it.
The Newtown Square girl has been hospitalized at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for three months with end-stage cystic fibrosis, and is on a ventilator. Her family wants children under 12 to be eligible for adult lungs because so few pediatric lungs are available.
Sebelius
declined to make a medical decision.
PHILADELPHIA - June 4, 2013 (WPVI) -- The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services says she doesn't want to intervene in transplant decisions about a dying Pennsylvania girl when other children are just as sick.
Kathleen Sebelius told a Congressional panel Tuesday that medical experts should make those decisions.
Yet Republicans have
politicized this situtation, saying that Sebelius has the power to override rules, though HHS lawyers have said she does not. The parents of course, insist Sebelius's authority is clear (how they would definitely know the answer in such a murky situation is unclear). Rep. Tom Price
seems to know the law better than HHS lawyers:
Sebelius said HHS lawyers disagree with Republicans who insist she can take emergency action. Instead of personally intervening, she has ordered a review of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network’s policy.
But Republicans — from Pennsylvania and other states — insist she intervene. “It simply takes your signature,” said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.). “A study will take over a year — this young lady will be dead.”
“Why are we going to let a little 10-year-old girl die because she is 10 and not 12,” said Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.). “Please suspend the rules until we look at this policy [that] we all believe is flawed. … We do so much bullcrap around this place and we have the chance to save someone’s life.”
Now Republicans, including Sarah Palin have bizarrely twisted this around to make Sebelius the villain, calling her a one-woman death panel for not stepping in (where she can't) and making a medical decision (which she's not qualified to do) to choose this patient over 40 others in front of her on the transplant list. So, they hate death panels, but they want the government, and Sebelius in paticular, to be one when it suits them
From Palin's Facebook page:
The government will bend the rules left and right to harass targeted taxpayers, conservative patriots, selected journalists, etc., but it will strictly exercise inconsistent and subjective rules to deny a child a shot at life. And they called us liars when we spoke of “death panels” – faceless bureaucrats coming between you and your doctor to make life and death decisions about a loved one’s survival. It doesn’t sound so far fetched anymore, does it?
Of course, no rules were 'bent' to target taxpayers, but the truth doesn't matter. And the rules for transplants are not made by bureaucrats, they're made by doctors, based on sound medical principles - but that's impossible for the anti-science crowd to grasp. In fact they are asking - demanding - that the "faceless" bureaucrats step in and override sound medical guidelines. Putting this girl in front of the line ahead of 40 others who have a better survival rate would would be an ultimate case of a death panel,
So they hate tyranny. Except when they want it.