"...Unless you live in Arizona, that is." (graphic: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital via Flickr)

If you need a certain type of organ transplant and live in Arizona, you’d better have a big bank account:

Effective at the beginning of October, Arizona stopped financing certain transplant operations under the state’s version of Medicaid. Many doctors say the decision amounts to a death sentence for some low-income patients, who have little chance of survival without transplants and lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them…

… Organ transplants are already the subject of a web of regulations, which do not guarantee that everyone in need of a life-saving organ will receive one. But Arizona’s transplant specialists are alarmed that patients who were in line to receive transplants one day were, after the state’s budget cuts to its Medicaid program, ruled ineligible the next — unless they raised the money themselves.

This policy lies in fundamental opposition to everything that progressives believe – and this is just the beginning of what we’ll see in the coming years. The time to stand up and fight is now.

What’s on your mind tonight?