If you need a heart transplant and you have health insurance ...
.... but it doesn't cover your post op immunosuppressive medications ....
"'You can't have a heart unless you do GoFundMe for 10K' is not a just system."
As progressive lawmakers and healthcare experts have frequently pointed out in recent months, few growing trends have laid bare the fundamental immorality and brokenness of America's healthcare system quite like the rise of GoFundMe and other crowdfunding platforms as methods of raising money for life-saving medical treatments that—due to insurance industry greed and dysfunction—are far too expensive for anyone but the very wealthiest to afford.
From the comments:
We are already being taxed enough to cover everyone’s healthcare in the US. It’s a matter of priorities. What is a heart procedure $50,000? A transplant $250,000? One cruise missile is million bucks. I am likely way off on this but I heard it costs a million bucks a day to run the military operations without purchases.
Time to tell uncle sam where we would prefer our dollars should go.As Common Dreams reported, a Koch-funded study published earlier this year inadvertently found that Medicare for All would save the American public $2 trillion in healthcare costs over ten years while covering everybody.
Martin has started a new GoFundMe to help pay for her treatment. She has raised over $12,000 of a $20,000 goal.
Comments
It seems to me
you don't have much of a heart if you can sign your name to a letter like that.
Sentenced to die for lack of coin?
USA USA USA. . .
THAT'S Exceptional.
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Yep, I saw this on Tumblr yesterday
Disgusting!! At least it's going viral. Is it an insurance company or a hospital? People in the comments were saying the letter wasn't from an insurance company, but I take what they say with an entire block of salt.
This shit is bananas.
exception
THAT'S an "Exceptional" to which I take exception!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Sign your name
It's not that poor RN who signed the letter who's lacking in heart.
It's the cowardly doctors on that "multidisciplinary heart transplant committee" who lacked the cojones to sign their names to their heartless decision who are lacking in this area.
That poor RN was merely the messenger of some really bad news.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I sit
corrected, Head Dead!
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Glad you highlighted this article . . .
At least the letter is going viral and getting attention. Thanks to you Hedda for sharing your story!
On a personal health care note. Some of you may remember me complaining about how the Texas teacher's retirement health insurance got screwed over by the Texas legislature last year. My husband carried our two kids on that policy. It went from a pretty decent plan to $3000 deductible with no co-pays. Plus he was already paying $400/month for it and this year it cut his retirement pay by $100/month. Add that all up and it was $9000 this year we were screwed over.
I was on a pretty crappy obamacare plan, but was probably better because I at least had co-pays and it only cost me $3/month. $6000 deductible though. I went to urgent care once and it cost me $75 and my meds were $11. 36 + 75 + 11 = $ 122.00 this year is not bad compared to $9000. Although I didn't have the luxury of physicals and check-ups. Only went to the doc because I thought I might have Lyme Disease.
Although . . . kudos this year to obamacare for my family. Switched the kids over and we found a plan . . . $25/month . . . $75 individual and $225 family deductible . . . $15 copay and 40% copay. Our doctors and meds are under the plan. Blue Cross is profiting plenty because the government pays $1800/month. There is no way our medical costs will come close to that bar disaster. So, yes . . . medicare for all!!
Health care for profit. Ugh.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Where are people finding ACA plans that cheap??
All the ones my husband and I qualified for back in Utah were between $200-400/month, and we didn't make that much money. And those were for bronze/silver plans.
This shit is bananas.
I don't know
Last year no such plans were available. Clearly it is not a consistent system.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
I am hoping it is not some weird fluke . . .
Most of the plans offered were still terrible. Two others were kind of OK. So then there is this plan that seems to be wonderful.
It just can't be anywhere as close to as bad as TRS care with Aetna. That makes putting your money in a savings account a way better plan. Bar disaster though. You still have to have a disaster plan.
Damn.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Any members of congress have to start a gfm for their problems?
Somehow I doubt that. I would like to know how many people saw their insurance premiums go up and by how much as well as their deductibles. A diary on ToP was defending Nancy's role in getting the ACA passed and first comment was about how high someone's deductible was for junk insurance while she was being treated for cancer. It went downhill from there.
Remember the days during the creation of the ACA when NYCeve was writing daily diaries trying to get people to contact their congress critters and how disappointed everyone was when first single payer was 'off the table' and then the Dawg dung details of the ACA came out? Fun times, eh? Now instead of pushing the democrats to pass MFA people are defending the ACA as it is. I thought that it was the first step towards single payer? Guess what? It set back single payer for gawd knows how long.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
This story on NC tells a much darker picture
of course a billionaire named devos is involved
yep and guess where he got a new heart, NHS, jumped
the que by paying 60,000 pounds
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/11/putting-gofundme-band-aid-cancer...
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
Didn't Cheney jump the que to get his new heart?
Guess the PTB might not kill all of us users. They might need our organs one day and what good will it do them if our organs are not healthy enough? Hmm ... maybe they should keep that in mind when they're thinking of gutting our social programs. Just a thought.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Don’t get your “hopes” up
3D organ printing is already becoming a thing. They take pluripotent stem cells from the recipient, convince them to be (say) lungs, grow then on connective tissue scaffolding taken from a cadaver and voila: a new organ with no rejection problems. This had already been demonstrated in pigs iirc.
The next step is printing the scaffold out of bio-friendly plastic. At that point, no, they won’t need your organs because they can just grow their own - and they won’t have to worry about your dirty proteins gumming up their nice clean immune system.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg