If Gov. Walker goes ahead with his reported plan to knife back on Medicaid coverage, the result may another set of real (as opposed to putative) death panels. In Arizona, controversial Republican Gov. Jan Brewer did cut back Medicaid, and the Associated Press has been tracking the results. The latest:
> PHOENIX (AP) -- A second person denied transplant coverage by Arizona under a state budget cut has died, with this death "most likely" resulting from the coverage reduction, a hospital spokeswoman said Wednesday.
> University Medical Center spokeswoman Jo Marie Gellerman said the patient died Dec. 28 at another medical facility after earlier being removed from UMC's list for a liver transplant needed because of hepatitis C... .
> Arizona reduced Medicaid coverage for transplants on Oct. 1 under cuts included to help close a shortfall in the state budget enacted last spring.
> Officials at the Tucson, Ariz., hospital said the patient's death "most likely" resulted from Arizona's scaling back coverage for transplants, she said... .
Meanwhile, Shawn Doherty writing for the Capital Times in Madison, has been like glue all over apparent plans in Wisconsin and other states now controlled by Republicans to reduce Medicaid coverage. Excerpted from Doherty's blog earlier today:
> The blog I wrote Friday about Wisconsin's newly appointed health director and his call for states to eliminate Medicaid rather than comply with federal health care reform provoked plenty of outrage and plenty of cheers in comments from readers.
> Given the interest, I've been poking around a bit more, and it turns out that Secretary Dennis W. Smith has some prominent company when it comes to his opinion that abandoning Medicaid is a "rational choice."
> A handful of Republican states have apparently already threatened to take such action --- "at least a half dozen states have publicly discussed withdrawing from the Medicaid program altogether because of its expense," according to an article Friday in the Wall Street Journal, which provides a nice in-a-nutshell summary of the economics and arguments of the debate over Medicaid... .