Cheney would “probably be dead by now” if not for his federally funded health care

CNN NEWSROOM
Aired July 2, 2001 - 04:30 ET

...BAKHTIAR: United States Vice President Dick Cheney plans to get back to business as usual today after surgery this weekend. Mr. Cheney returned home from the hospital Saturday just hours after being fitted with a defibrillator. It's a device meant to correct any irregular heart rhythm he might experience. Now, the vice president has a history of heart trouble but says he's in good shape and feeling fine....http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../02/nr.00.html

Commentary
Can the HMOs Now Retreat From the Cheney Standard? The vice president's case speaks volumes about physician judgment and patient access to therapy....

...The recommendation of an ICD for Cheney is light years beyond what is being done in the general medical community. Of the 40,000 new ICDs implanted in the U.S. annually, almost all are for patients who have already been resuscitated after a cardiac arrest. Only 5% to 10% now are for the preventive indications used in the Cheney case.

It helps to be a high profile patient. Cheney had his problem identified and was in the hospital the next weekend.
Where was the primary care physician in the decision-making process, unless it was the widely quoted chief of medicine at George Washington University Hospital? Was there a managed care official involved, or was President Bush standing in for the HMO when he said that he thought the procedure was a good idea?

In California, a patient like Cheney might be referred to a specialist. Then the struggle would begin with the managed care provider for approval to implant an ICD.
No quick Saturday implant in Los Angeles. Rather, the treatment request would go to a procedure approval system that is slow, arbitrary and designed to postpone or prevent care. If such a patient (with Cheney's indications) is uninsured, forget it:..." Dr David S Cannom (Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles):

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/...esc=Commentary

"In this cost-conscious world, physicians are not usually encouraged to look for expensive therapies like the defibrillator. This data, from my standpoint, speaks for itself. The device works it's incredibly effective at defibrillating the heart."

In July of this year when Vice President Dick Cheney received an ICD, Cannom took on the issue of how this expensive therapy will be used in an editorial that appeared in the LA Times. He pointed out if Cheney had not been who he is, the process for use of an ICD in a preventive indication would have been long and arduous, going through an HMO approval system, "designed to postpone or prevent care."
Given the decision in Cheney's case, it would be more difficult for insurance plans to back away from the "Cheney standard," Cannom added. "Enabling high-risk cardiovascular patients such as Cheney to be treated in the right way medically may be one of the major accomplishments of the Bush administration," he wrote.

http://www.theheart.org/viewEntityDi...legacyId=27067

Professionals call for Medicare-style health plan

Nurses' ad cites Cheney's heart troubles as evidence of universal need

By Russ Britt, MarketWatch
Last update: 7:24 p.m. EST Dec. 7, 2007

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- While health-care reform may play second fiddle to the war in Iraq among voters this election season, it appears that the domestic issue is taking on new life thanks to medical-industry professionals.

An advertisement, due to appear Monday in Iowa newspapers ahead of upcoming caucuses there, calls for a single-payer, national health-insurance plan similar to Medicare, and cites Vice President Dick Cheney's chronic heart troubles as evidence of its need. It is sponsored by the Oakland, Calif.-based California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.

At the top of the ad, there's a news story about a recent visit by Cheney to the hospital for treatment of an irregular heartbeat. Underneath, it says: "If he were anyone else, he'd probably be dead by now."
The ad goes on to note that under the government health-insurance program that covers Cheney, he is not turned away for preexisting conditions or unable to be treated for what an insurance company might label "experimental treatments."

"There's a whole set of barriers that he has never faced," said Michael Lighty, director of public policy for the nurses' group.

Welcome to the 2008 elections, where medical professionals are turning up the heat in favor of a universal, single-payer system that represents a radical departure from what most of the major presidential candidates are proposing. They know that such a system is a long shot at this point, but the numbers in their camp are growing....

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/stor...306E3A2406B%7D