Can Safety, Freedom And Rationing Co-Exist For The Elderly?

by Susan Mathews, Bioethics Program Alumna (2014)

In a recent op-ed article, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, former Special Advisor for Health Policy to the Obama Administration, stated that he did not want to live beyond the age of 75. At that point, his productive life would be over and he become a burden rather than a benefit to his family, his friends and his country.

Whether or not you agree with Dr. Emanuel’s provocative statement, he raised an important point in his article: in order to contain health care costs, Americans will have to make difficult decisions about rationing of medical care. This is particularly true of end-of-life care for the elderly, which is a significant contributor to medical spending in the United States.

The problem will only become more acute in the coming years. The 65 and over population is projected to grow from 13 percent of the population today to 20 percent by the year 2030. In that same period, the population of the “old-old” (85+) will quadruple as the large baby boomer cohort reaches these advanced ages.

So as explicit rationing of medical care becomes a reality, how can costs be managed while still respecting the rights and safety of the elderly?

To read more, click here.

[This post is a summary of an article published on Life Matters Media on January 16, 2015. The contents of this blog are solely the responsibility of the author and do not represent the views of the Bioethics Program or Union Graduate College.]

 

Does A Just Society Use the “R” Word?

by Susan Mathews, Bioethics Program Alumna (2014)

Healthcare spending in the U.S. is expected to grow by more than 5 percent annually over the next ten years. Should that prediction hold true, by 2023 health care spending will account for a fifth of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Unfortunately, this level of spending is not sustainable and physicians, policymakers and patients will be forced to make difficult choices about how to ration limited medical resources.

How should the principle of distributive justice, one of the four tenets of medical ethics, guide decisions about the dreaded ‘R’ word: rationing of medical resources?

To read more, click here.

[This post is a summary of an article published on Life Matters Media on December 13, 2014. The contents of this blog are solely the responsibility of the author and do not represent the views of the Bioethics Program or Union Graduate College.]

Where Social Justice Fits in Medical Decision-Making

by Susan Mathews, Bioethics Program Alumna (2014)

The current healthcare reimbursement system curtails treatment choices for Americans by narrowing networks, imposing strict guidelines for coverage or setting deductibles that are so high as to restrict to care.  But what does social justice have to say about this issue?

Social justice implies fairness and mutual obligation in society. As members of a social group, we are responsible for one another. We should ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in life. Ensuring equal opportunity of access to healthcare is part of that obligation, as being reasonably healthy is a basic necessity to succeed at providing for oneself or one’s family.

To read more, click here.

[This post is a summary of an article published on Life Matters Media on November 17, 2014. The contents of this blog are solely the responsibility of the author and do not represent the views of the Bioethics Program or Union Graduate College.]

Physician Authority to Make the Determination of Death: Why It Matters

This guest post is part of The Bioethics Program’s Online Symposium on the Munoz and McMath cases. To see all symposium contributions, click here.

by James Zisfein, M.D.
Chief, Division of Neurology, and Chair, Ethics Committee, Lincoln Medical Center

Why does it matter, to those of us involved in clinical ethics, that physicians are losing the authority to determine that a person has died?

I offer several reasons, in increasing order of importance:

Firstly, there is the (wasted) financial cost of maintaining dead people in critical care beds. However, even with the loss of physician authority to determine death becoming more common (due to publicity surrounding the Jahi McMath case), this cost is but a small fraction of our national health expenditures.

A more important reason is damage to professional integrity. The damage cannot be easily measured, but it’s real. The most bitter complaint I hear from critical care nurses is regarding their wasted efforts to prolong the lives of the imminently dying, and how that infringes on their time available to help patients with a chance to recover. (I don’t think they’ll be much happier ministering to the already dead.) And we have to also acknowledge the feelings of us neurologists and intensivists who use our extensive training and skill to make a correct determination of death only to see it nullified by angry but ignorant families, inept hospital administrators, and [unprintable] court rulings. Personally, it makes me wonder why the hell I’m doing this.

Thirdly, there will be inevitable loss of transplantable organs. As more and more families doubt the accuracy of determinations of death and assert dubious religious objections, and get supported by courts, there will be more and more lives lost on transplant waiting lists. It is already a far too common heartbreak when a child or young adult dies from liver failure, and the death could have been prevented. Prepare for a lot more heartbreak.

But the most important reason for allowing physicians to do their jobs — to determine death properly by medical standards — is for the sake of bereaved families. They have already suffered a tremendous loss, and introducing doubt about the fact of death or possibility of recovery does not change the outcome. It only intensifies and prolongs their anguish.

That’s why I think it matters. Any other takers?

Much Ado About UNOS

by Sean Philpott, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Clinical Leadership

Next weekend my husband and I plan to attend a fundraiser to raise money to cover some medical expenses for the friend of a friend. The person in question, a middle-aged woman not much older than myself, suffers from severe cardiomyopathy. Her heart is literally falling apart and she needs a transplant.

Even if a suitable heart is found, the costs of the transplant are astronomical. The procedure itself costs over $600,000. That price doesn’t include any post-operative care, which can run patients another $200,000. Nor does that figure include the cost of immunosuppressive drugs, which heart transplant recipients need to take for the rest of their lives. Those drugs and follow-up monitoring run nearly $30,000 annually.

Now, my friend’s friend is somewhat lucky in this regard. Her health insurance will actually cover most of these costs, at least until she hits her lifetime coverage cap. So then, why is there a need to have a fundraising event?

The reason is that the family needs to move to California in order to improve the patient’s chance of getting a suitable donor organ. Organ transplantation in the United States is overseen by an organization called the United Network for Organ Sharing (or UNOS), a private non-profit organization that operates under contract with the federal government. One of the things that UNOS does is manage the national transplant waiting list, matching patients in need of an organ with suitable donors (both living and dead).

Organs for transplant are exceedingly rare commodities. For example, nearly 4,000 people are currently on the waiting list for a new heart; that is almost double the number of organs that become available annually. UNOS thus allocates these organs according to a complex algorithm that includes age, blood type, medical urgency, waiting time, geographic distance between donor and recipient, size of the donor organ in relation to the recipient, and type of organ needed. In the case of new hearts, the two key factors are medical urgency and geographical distance.

To deal with geography, UNOS divides the country into 11 different zones, and organs tend to be allocated within a particular zone. When a heart becomes available in zone 9 (which includes New York and Western Vermont), it tends to go to a patient in zone 9. But not all zones are equal. In this zone, where there are nearly 350 waiting patients, only 175 hearts became available last year. By contrast, in zone 5 (which includes California and other Southwestern states) there are 380 eligible candidates and 357 hearts become available in 2012.

So geography matters, and so my friend’s friend is heading to Los Angeles in order to get on the transplant list there. Unfortunately, health insurance doesn’t cover those relocation costs, and the family is desperately trying to raise money to finance the move.

That they need to do so highlights one of the problems with the current system: those with money stand a better chance of getting an organ than those who do not. The organ allocation system managed by UNOS was ostensibly designed to combat this, avoiding a return to the dark days when groups like the Seattle God Squad decided which patients lived and which died on the basis of social worth.

The system works in the sense that medical need and patient suitability are the key factors that determine who gets an organ, not social worth. But money, which is itself often a measure of social worth, can be used to game the system. People with money can move to different geographical zones in order to increase the likelihood that they will receive an organ, they can hire top specialists who know how to make medical need look more urgent, and they can even sue in federal court in order to challenge existing allocation rules.

Sadly, there is little that we can do to fix this. Given the fundamental structural problems with access and delivery of health care in the US, the system is just about as good as it can get. Until every American has comprehensive health insurance, and until that insurance also covers associated costs of care and treatment (like moving expenses for transplant candidates), the wealthy will have a greater chance to get scarce resources like organs. For now, the rest of us will simply have to rely on luck and bake sales.

[This blog entry was originally presented as an oral commentary on Northeast Public Radio on August 29, 2013. It is also available on the WAMC website. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the author alone and do not represent the views of the Bioethics Program or Union Graduate College.]

Take a Breath

by Theresa Spranger, Bioethics Program Alumna (MSBioethics 2012)

The country has been gripped with interest watching the case of Sarah Murnaghan.  Sarah is a 10 year old Cystic Fibrosis patient who was in desperate need of a lung transplant.  The current transplant waiting list rules state that children under the age of 12 can receive lungs from an adult donor only if those lungs are not needed for an adult or adolescent in the same geographical area.

On the surface this may sound malicious and unjust, but let’s dig deeper.  In order for a child, under the age of 12, to receive adult lungs they must be re-sized for the smaller chest cavity of the child.  Current research says that this re-sizing process can make the lungs less stable and the transplant less successful than adolescent or adult transplants.

Being a logical thinker these types of media frenzy stories drive me batty.  An uneducated public is led by a manipulative or possibly, equally uneducated media to “react” on emotion rather than truly think about the issue.  In a moment the country was abuzz about the “unfair” transplant allocation rules and how we need to change them RIGHT NOW!

I am not saying that these rules don’t need to be updated; I am certainly no authority on lung allocation or transplantation.  My knowledge in this area is limited to information that came up in my recent Google search.  We may very well need to change the process, but let’s take our time, use logic, and consult the experts.

Certainly, Sarah’s story is heart wrenching and no one wants to see a little girl’s life end.  Medical policy however, cannot be created based on preventing whichever outcome would make us the most sad.  UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing, has difficult, almost impossible decisions to make every day about who receives the organs they have available.  They have to make these decisions logically and free of emotion.  To be truly just, they need to give the organs to patients who will benefit from them the most, this includes considering which transplants will be the most successful.

After the nationwide outcry and a court order, Sarah’s name was given priority on the lung transplant list.  She received her transplant and her body almost immediately rejected the lungs.  Three days later Sarah received a second transplant; it is extremely rare to receive two transplants so close together.  This second surgery was approximately two weeks ago, and according to press releases from her parents Sarah is doing well.

We should certainly all be happy for Sarah and her family and pray for her continued recovery.  I have no issue at all with the Murnaghan’s fight for their daughter.  I understand what it means to have a family member with a terminal illness and the need to exhaust every resource within reach to save them.  Any avenue that brings a family peace or allows them to continue the fight is fine with me.

I am disappointed however with the reactive media and general public.  Organ allocation is a complex process and should be treated as such.  This means any proposed changes should be thoughtful, logical, and well supported with data.  Sarah’s story stirs emotions in us and we want to help her, but what about the other people on the transplant list?

Maybe there is a 15 year old honors student, or a 22 year old with aspirations for medical school, or a 25 year old mother of 2, or 40 year old father of 5.  We need to keep in mind that Sarah’s is the story we know, but not the only sad story on the lung transplant waiting list.  We trust UNOS with the decisions, because they have a commitment to making them logically, based on need and benefit rather than emotion.

[This blog entry was originally posted in a slightly edited form on Ms. Spranger’s blog on June 30, 2013. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the author alone and do not represent the views of the Bioethics Program or Union Graduate College.]