DEFUNDING ORGAN TRANSPLANTS

In the spring of 1987, Arizona state government came face-to-face with a controversy partly of its own making and partly cause by national health policy in the United States. Regardless of the sources of the problem, however, it was the state government (the legislature primarily, but also the governor) who had to respond to public pressures over a state policy that rationed health care services in such a way that (a) Diana Brown (a 43 year old) died because the Arizona Medicaid program, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) denied coverage for a transplant operation that was required for her survival, while (b) state-funded health care access for pregnant women and children aged six through 13 was extended to families with household income levels above that were higher than the AHCCCS qualification maximum but which were below the official federal poverty income level.

The public controversy centered on a woman's probable preventable death and assuring basic health services access to pregnant women and children in indigent households. The real policy issue (the big policy question), however, involve the appropriate use of state assets to fund health care services in Arizona. The evaluation of this issue involves the analysis of the case Matters of Life and Death: Defunding Organ Transplants in the State of Arizona (Varley, 1988).

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nd (b) the benefit-contribution ratio of other Arizona residents who receive basic health care services because they were poor. Social justice is a difficult concept to pin down, as many theorists tend to view the concept in different ways. For this writer, however, social justice is a combination of distributive justice, equity theory, and procedural justice. Procedural justice theory focuses on process · on the influence of decision-making procedures on the fairness of outcomes. Thus, in this case, the criterion would be the extent to which procedures mandated by Arizona state government resulted in unjust outcomes for Arizona residents in relation to health care. An evaluative criterion related to this writer's concept of social justice, therefore, would evaluate the fairness of health care outcomes for individuals, the equity of such outcomes in relation to the relative contributions of individuals to society, and the fairness of the procedural system that leads to such outcomes. The issue of capacity also is critical to the development of widespread public support for a health care policy in Arizona. Thus, some of the evaluative criteria in assessing alternative solutions in thus case must consider the issues of econom
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Diana Brown, Recommended Solution, Surrounding Question, System AHCCCS, Options Arizona, Evaluation Criteria, Arizona Fourth, health care, Policy Question, United Regardless, health care services, care services, distributive justice, social justice, References Varley, organ transplants, cost-benefit analysis, equity theory, diana brown, basic health, medicaid program, basic health care, distributive justice equity, health care access, justice equity theory,
Approximate Word count = 2072
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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