Man taken off of transplant list due to lack of insurance

[hopemountain]

37. transplants are a business -

even though it is illegal to sell body parts - universities, hospitals, institutes and scientific/medical labs have found a way to make money: they only select transplant candidates with a high success profile.

why? because if their transplant patients do not survive the transplant and the hospital or medical facility has a high rate of "failures" - they are less able to attract monstrosity size donations. large donors do not like to have their donations and names associated with high "failure" rates.

of course, the candidate must fulfill or meet specific criteria to qualify for the donor list - first, all of their organs must be as high functioning as possible.

here are a few more of the determining criteria: there are many expensive tests for determining the donated organ acceptance rate of the potential candidate, the overall health of the potential candidate, the current functioning status of the failing organ, and of course how the entire process will be paid for/covered.

of course there are more criteria to add to the equation and it may vary with institutions.

for example, at age 41, my husband suffered a stroke and congestive heart failure following a viral infection which settled in his heart. he had a 50/50 chance of living 6 months - but he pulled through.

he was sent to a research hospital where luckily (yes, luck is huge in the transplant business) was assigned an awesome cardiologist who coached him through the entire screening process to qualify for a heart transplant and got him on the transplant list. he continued to maintain his health and heart function for 6 more years.

the month before 9/11, we discovered that one of his heart medications had been mixed up by the pharmacy. we don't know for how long he had been taking a diabetes med with a similar name instead of the key heart support med he needed.

when this was discovered, the cardiologist ran tests to assess for any damage. yes, in 2 months time (since his last heart function test) his heart function rate had decreased by 50% more than what was acceptable to be on the list - so, he was dropped from the list.

my husband lived 8 more months. he passed at the age of 47. incidentally, he passed the same year cheney had his transplant.

this young man's family might consider looking at other medical facilities that offer kidney transplants. they do vary in determining what is acceptable / considered for transplants.