Controversy
The Oregon Health Plan became the focus of national scrutiny in 2003, after deep budget cuts led to 100,000 people in mental health and/or substance abuse treatment losing prescription coverage under the program.
During 2008 and 2009, the Oregon Health Plan stirred up controversy when enforcing 1994 guidelines to only cover comfort care, and not to cover cancer treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy for patients with less than a 5% chance of survival over five years.
Springfield resident Barbara Wagner said her oncologist prescribed the chemotherapy drug Tarceva for her lung cancer, but that Oregon Health Plan officials sent her a letter declining coverage for the drug, and informing her that they will only pay for palliative care and physician-assisted suicide. She appealed the denial twice, but lost both times. Tarceva drugmaker Genentech agreed to supply her the $4000-a-month drug free of charge. Wagner's plight garnered a flurry of attention from the media, the blogosphere, and triggered protest from religious groups. Wagner died in October 2008, three weeks after starting Tarceva.
Read more about this topic: Oregon Health Plan
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
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