Once upon a time liberals mocked Sarah Palin for suggesting Obamacare was fraught with “death panels” that would decide who gets proper medical treatment.
The University of Washington hospital has done just that in order to enforce vaccine compliance.
The University Medical Center has denied life-saving organ transplants to patients who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine, according to conservative talk-radio host Jason Rantz.
Rantz said he’s heard from numerous people who have been notified they were jettisoned from the hospital waitlist, or threatened with that, after indicating they would not get jabbed.
One of them, Sam Allen, told Rantz that the heart condition he seeks to remedy with a transplant makes it unwise to get a coronavirus shot. Rantz also cited a patient named Derek Kovic, who was taken off the list for a liver transplant because he had not gotten a vaccine.
Rantz quoted a letter on his website that Allen received about his removal. The transplant selection committee had “concerns about compliance with COVID-19-related policies and recommendations,” the letter stated. “We can re-assess you for reinstatement on the waiting list should the compliance concerns resolve in the future or, if you wish, refer you to another center for evaluation in the meantime.”
Allen said he has been waiting for nearly three years for a new heart.
Rantz said it is “disturbing to apply this policy to someone on the transplant list before COVID existed. How is that ethical?”
The university, according to Rantz, will not concede it has an actual policy that forbids transplants for unvaccinated patients. Nor would administrators spell out the conditions under which a shot was not required. But it also does not deny that people like Allen and Kovic have been removed because of their vaccination status.
Rantz said he believes a policy exists because he’s gotten “emails from several patients with the same story of being denied or threatened with denial of treatment over COVID vaccine refusal.”
Simultaneously, the university has had to mandate vaccines for its workers.
Back on June 3, the UW news service reported, “Faculty and staff will need to confirm they have been vaccinated against COVID-19 by autumn quarter in order to work on the UW’s campuses or within its facilities.”
“I don’t think there are ulterior motives, nor do I think they view the risks of vaccine side effects as high. I believe they’re doing what they think is right. One can obviously make a medical argument that the vaccine is the smart move in this case,” Rantz noted.
“But it’s wrong to deny potentially life-saving health care to patients when their decision on a vaccine does not impact the procedure,” he added. “Could you defend a mandate for patients when your staff wasn’t fully compliant?”
Apparently, UW Medicine can, and will.
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