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The Oregon Health Services Commission

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The Oregon Health Services Commission addressed budget cuts in 1990 by proposing services for Medicaid services in order of priority based on a cost-effectiveness analysis. Access to particular services became limited, but coverage was increased from 67% to 100% of the poverty line1. Much protest broke out in regards to how the treatments were prioritized on the list. Some of the notable results of the draft were prioritization of minor over serious services and the death of 7-year old Coby Howard following funding cuts for organ transplant . Coby was suffering from a form of leukemia and unable to procure enough money for a bone marrow transplant, formerly covered by Medicaid until the changes took affect1. His death became the face of …show more content…

The Commission assessed priority levels on three factors: 1) the expected net benefit received from the treatment, 2) the anticipated length of this benefit, and 3) the costs directly associated with providing the service1. The costs were compared to the benefit of receiving the given service on a patient’s overall quality of life1. This goal was seen as an ideal scenario for those on the committee to render as many services as possible with the best health-cost ratio. The reasoning behind CEA and its benefits is based on the theory of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism focuses on the idea of happiness, which is defined as pleasure and the absence of pain . The theory reviews the moral quality of actions on whether good consequences were maximized over bad ones. This principle applies that a bad consequence can always be outweighed by a good, whether it is a large good or aggregation of smaller ones3. This theory justifies the priority-ranking list presented by the Commission because they were trying to improve medical access and coverage to as many Medicaid recipients as possible. One aspect of the draft was to prioritize the treatment interventions in which its benefits, a better quality of life adjusted following care, would outweigh the costs of hospital bills. The list was also viewed as arranging common services over rare

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