Changing Policies, Saving Lives
ALRP Panel Notes Fall 2008
ALRP Panel Attorney (and last year’s Clint Hockenberry Award recipient) Tim Halloran represented an ALRP client, Damien Grey, who sought a lung transplant in order to treat his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Damien contacted ALRP after Medi-Cal denied him the authorization to obtain the tests necessary for his transplant. The denial was entirely based on Damien’s HIV status. Medi-Cal further refused to pay for the transplant on the same basis. Mr. Halloran took the case because it was clear that the HIV community was being discriminated against in medical transplants, resulting in patients being denied life-saving procedures when they were otherwise healthy enough to be organ recipients. Mr. Halloran appealed Medi-Cal’s decision to an Administrative Law Judge, who effectively overruled the initial denial, finding “the policy to delay transplant services solely on the basis of the patient’s HIV status is discriminatory."
Unfortunately, the director of Medi-Cal refused to adopt the ALJ’s decision, and instead authorized the continued discriminatory treatment of HIV-positive people seeking transplants.
Refusing to give up, Mr. Halloran filed a petition in San Francisco Superior Court. At the same time, he contacted Assemblyman Mark Leno, whose office helped to reach out to the Governor’s office. As of May 1, Assemblymen Leno’s office reported that they received promising news from the Governor’s office and that Damien’s Treatment Authorization Request had been suspended, not denied, and they would be contacting the hospital to get more information. More broadly, the Governor’s office agreed work towards a change to Medi-Cal’s policy to keep it in line with state laws protecting people with HIV/AIDS and other disabilities. While the change will not be implemented immediately, in the meantime organ transplant requests for HIV-positive patients will be elevated to the Division Chief level to ensure that the decisions are in compliance with the new policy. And while this does not constitute official approval for Damien’s transplant, it is safe to say that things look promising.