State Medicaid Won't Pay for Indiana Baby Life-saving Treatment
After Budget Cuts, Indiana Baby Denied Life-saving Treatment
December 9, 2010The Lookout via Yahoo! News - An Indiana baby needs life-saving surgery, but the state health care agency -- whose budget was slashed this year -- won't pay for it.
Six-month-old Seth Petreikis suffers from complete DiGeorge syndrome, which keeps him from developing a thymus, an infection-fighting glandular organ. He needs a transplant that's been pioneered by a specialist at Duke University in North Carolina. But the procedure costs $500,000, and the state's Family Social Services Administration won't pay for it under the state's Medicaid, reports the Northwest Indiana Times. It claims that the treatment is "experimental" -- even though 58 of 60 children to receive it have survived.
We last wrote about Indiana's FSSA after some of its staffers told parents to drop off their developmentally disabled children at homeless shelters. The parents had failed to receive schedule Medicare waivers to pay for care, after Gov. Mitch Daniels -- who is now weighing a possible 2012 GOP presidential run -- cut the agency's funding to deal with a budget shortfall.
As we've reported, Arizona, suffering from its own budget crunch, has cut funding for certain medical transplants for people with diseases such as leukemia and hepatitis B.
Seth's parents have set up a fund for those who want to contribute to the cost of his treatment.
