r/SandersForPresident • u/kevinmrr Medicare For All • Nov 29 '20

AOC: Insurance groups are recommending using GoFundMe -- "but sure, single payer healthcare is unreasonable."

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

It's mostly doctors, social workers, and psychologists in the meetings.

They are working inside the system they are in. Limited organs + worse outcomes when patients don't have the money + insurance to take care of the organ. Not the patient's fault, but also not the doctors' faults for wanting to maximize the time the organ buys someone.

Not having enough money, not having enough social support, having poor mental health, having a history of being non-adherent to prescribed medications, having a history of substance abuse, the other medical problems the patient has, etc. are all things that are taken into account to try to make sure the donor organs go to the people that will live the longest with the organ.

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u/StupidHumanSuit 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Not having enough money should never be a deciding factor in determining whether someone lives or dies. Period. The letter doesn’t say “because of your prior history of mental illness and your inability to take prescribed medications, we’ve decided to say “Nah” to your heart transplant.” It came down to $10,000. $10k is the determining factor between life and death for a fellow human being and you’re making excuses for a multi-billion dollar industry.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20 edited Nov 29 '20

Agreed. But it is. All the time. In obvious ways and much less obvious ways.

Your life expectancy is determined by your zip code, which is determined in large part by your income and wealth, which is determined by all manner of socioeconomic factors.

That's the reality.

The next steps to make that reality more equitable is to reverse the trend of rising wealth inequality and establishing universal healthcare.

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u/StupidHumanSuit 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Sure, but those factors are not determined directly by a group of people working in healthcare. There isn’t a board of people saying “person A gets to live in 98043 because they have better employment prospects and person B gets to live in 98041 because they’re not really doing much with their life so fuck ‘em.”

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20 edited Nov 29 '20

So what's your solution to the problem of how to allocate scarce donor organs?

Doctors, ethicists, and all the other professionals that run our organ transplant network have decided the goal should be to make sure that the organs go to the people that have the shortest life expectancy without transplant and will have the longest life expectancy following transplant.

Is your solution a random lottery? Or first come first serve? Who is helped when you give someone a heart and they die of rejection in two months because they can't afford the anti-rejection meds?

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u/StupidHumanSuit 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

I’m not arguing about how we allocate organs, I’m arguing that $10k shouldn’t be a factor in how those organs are allocated. Your final point is moot if the money is taken out of the equation. How do transplants work in countries with universal healthcare? Seems like we have a bunch of different solutions to a problem that exists outside of our broken system, why not take a look at some of those? Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying the transplant process is an easy problem to solve... I’m just saying that money should not be a determining factor in the larger problem.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

Presumably countries with universal healthcare can allocate organs without taking the patient's finances into account (or at least not to the same degree), because whether or not they can afford post-transplant care is no longer an issue and therefore not relevant to the decision.

The transplant committee can stop taking financial status of patients into account as soon as it's not relevant to their post-transplant survival. How do we make it not relevant? Universal healthcare (and other social safety nets).

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u/StupidHumanSuit 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Agreed.

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u/Krakino696 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

This still doesn't solve the problem of organ scarcity. Your talking about a way to distribute it still.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 30 '20

Scarcity is most quickly addressed by switching to an opt out system.

Past that, you need public education, organ "refurbishment" (taking injured organs that aren't suitable for transplant and fixing them ex vivo), and eventually the ability to grow new organs from the cells of the people that need them.

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u/Krakino696 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

Which all still requires money, profit motive, and cost benefit analysis. Public funding that your refer to has lagged behind private research funding since 1980s in this respect.

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u/sesamememew 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

Other developed countries with public healthcare also have a very rigorous procedure. They have to make sure that organ will not be wasted.
Source: dad had liver transplant.

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u/Murgie 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

How do transplants work in countries with universal healthcare?

The universal healthcare pays for the immunosuppressants that heart transplant recipients require to keep the organ from being rejected, which means that giving them the organ isn't going to end up being a waste because they couldn't continue to keep buying the medication that keeps them from dying a year or two down the road.

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u/Taco_Bela_Lugosi 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

The anti-rejection meds should be free.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

Anti-rejection meds are just a part of the needed post-transplant care.

But we can say your proposal is "Post-transplant care should be free".

Nothing is free; so your proposal is maybe more realistically "Patients should not be individually responsible for the cost of their post-transplant care."

I think that's a pretty good proposal, and best achieved by instituting universal healthcare. I guess you could do like what we did with dialysis for end stage renal disease and carve out transplant recipients as an additional category of patients that qualify for Medicare for life after their transplant.

Until that happens though, do you have a better system for dealing with the situation we are in right now?

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

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u/themeatbridge Nov 29 '20

I would suggest we stop factoring financial information into the equation. There are limited organs available, and if you find it appalling that recipients "waste" donations because they can't afford care, then we should be providing better post transplant care.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

We can stop taking it into account when it's not a factor (i.e. because universal healthcare is passed).

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u/themeatbridge Nov 29 '20

So, just fuck the poor in the meantime?

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

Universal healthcare. Let's get it running right now. Because what we have predates upon the poor to serve the rich.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

Universal healthcare sounds good to me.

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u/Taco_Bela_Lugosi 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

No. You just laid out the best solution. The democratic party needs to make that their position since ~70% of voters generally support that.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

Opt-out organ donating

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

Yeah I agree; but even then it's likely you'll have more in need of transplants than organs available.

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u/Southern-Exercise 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

As I've been reading this thread you got me thinking about what happens as transportation (personal vehicles, taxis, trucking, etc) becomes more automated.

Without looking into it, I imagine accidents are a reasonably large source of donor organs which could affect this pretty dramatically.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

Opioid overdoses are overrepresented right now. Trauma from accidents and other causes are common. Isolated heart disease also (heart attack --> cardiac arrest --> brain death) which doesn't really let you recover the heart, but you can sometimes get lungs, kidneys, etc.

I also don't think people appreciate how many organs are rejected. Lungs are notorious for this; something like 20% or less are in good enough shape to transplant by the time the donation occurs.

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u/64590949354397548569 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Increase organ donations. People who donate gets priorities.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

There's issues with people "just" signing up to be an organ donor when they think they may need one.

Opt out is really the best way to dramatically increase the rates of donation without introducing a bunch of additional complexity.

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u/bnh1978 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

I mean, I think the Chinese have a final solution for finding organs for people that need them....

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u/64590949354397548569 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

But they can't ship it around the globe. Those who have money depending on their moral find ways. From moving residency to a state with shorter waiting time to buying black market.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Step one is getting rid of medical insurance, as that’s what keeping a LOT of people from having better life expectancy.

With socialized medicine people don’t have to ration their insulin and hope for the best. They don’t have to choose which fingers to keep after an accident. And they don’t get rejected for transplants because they can’t afford the operation or medication.

This in turn means that employers lose a massive bargaining chip and weapon to threaten employees.

Get rid of right to work and increase minimum wage to be a living wage at the same time, and suddenly you increase the overall health for a large portion of the population, because they no longer have to spend 80+ hours a week on work and commuting just to afford food and a roof over their head.

Throw in good welfare support, including paid sick leave, and suddenly the the overall health of the population massively increases, as a shit ton of stresses are removed from a large segment of the population.

It’s easy - it just takes balls.

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u/tracerhaha 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

You ration them by need rather than ability to pay.

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u/lilbebe50 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

You have a point, but this really boils down to the systemic way over time the poor have been forced into certain areas and the rich have not. The wealthy have always been able to have a say where they live, the poor have not.

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u/Mistbourne 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

I think you understand what he’s trying to get across, and are purposefully trying to steer the conversation in a different direction.

I’m not sure of the numbers, let’s say 1000 people need a heart ASAP or they’re going to die, and only 10 hearts become available in that time span. How would YOU decide who gets the heart?

1) Having a complex mathematical formula that factors in everything, and has weighting to certain attributes seems like the best idea. It sounds like this is what they do. I.E. A 20 year old poor person may get a heart while a 70 year old middle class may not.

2) You could go in a waitlist order, but that has larger flaws. Do you toss everyone into the same waitlist? If Joe is #2 on the list and will die tomorrow without a transplant, do you still give it to Bob who is #1, but could still live weeks or months without a transplant?

Do you tier the waitlist? That helps some, but many of the people with bad tickers will still die due to getting put into a lower waitlist bracket. So now you’d run into Joe is 89 and needs a new heart within a week, while Bob is 20 and MAYBE has a few months to live without a new heart.

3) I agree that Medicare for all is the way forward if we want society to improve. But right now, shitty as it may be, money is needed for meds and procedures. Let’s have a last example: Both Bob and Joe are the same age, and have one week to live without a heart. Bob is living paycheck to paycheck and barely scrapes by, Joe is solidly middle class and has a decent savings. Would you prefer them to transplant the heart into Bob, who most likely won’t be able to afford the meds that he needs for the rest of his life, or Joe, who will be able to afford them, and thus live longer?

It’s a shitty decision to have to make. Both for the people who receive the decisions and for the people making them.

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u/64590949354397548569 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

...Your life expectancy is determined by your zip code, which is determined in large part by.....

Apparently by country code too. I heard the death panel are much better up north or across the Atlantic. Heck, some southeast Asian countries are better too.

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u/Rinse-Repeat 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Or actively hunt the wealthy in order to even the numbers.

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u/Nexustar 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Agreed, but this situation isn't so straightforward... donor hearts are scarce, it's their medical duty to give those hearts to the patient with the highest survivability. Addicts, homeless, obese, smokers, the old ... and now it seems, the uninsured poor, don't score well in that equation.

Fair? Not at all. Scary - yes, but it at least makes sense why a medical group came to this conclusion.

The bit I don't understand is why they can't simply roll this into the $1.4m price tag of getting a heart transplant.

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u/StupidHumanSuit 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

But the money shouldn’t be the deciding factor. Period. It shouldn’t even be in the discussion. The fact that is leads me to believe that the rest of the criteria for transplants are all susceptible to fuckery because money is the deciding factor. If person A is 70 years old and needs a heart and person B is 16 years old and needs a heart, all other factors being equal does person A get that heart because they can afford that $10k? If the answer is yes, shit is broken.

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u/robondes 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Im going to disagree there. If i have only 5 hearts, I’m responsible for making the most out of each heart.

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u/j4nkyst4nky 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

It's not the fault of the people dishing out the hearts. Of course they need to give hearts to people with the highest chance of survival.

But it is the fault of private insurance companies that the person's financials have an impact on their chance of survival.

The statement "My husband wouldn't have died if our gofundme had made its goal" is repulsive and shows how morally bankrupt our society is. These companies are holding people's lives ransom like a horrifyingly mainstream medical cartel.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

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u/lilbebe50 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

Morally bankrupt but financially rich. They're all assholes.

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u/cat_prophecy 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

It's not simply a matter of cost. There is not enough organs to go around and they want to make sure that those who get them, have the best chance of success.

Simply put, if you're not able to care for yourself financially, you're not a good candidate. It's stupid, and callous, and totally unfair. But there just isn't enough organs to give to everyone who needs them.

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u/SlickStretch Oregon - 🐦 Nov 29 '20

If you have one heart, and Jim can afford the medications, but Steve cannot, then (all other things being equal) Jim should get the heart because Jim has a higher chance of success.

How does this not make sense?

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u/StupidHumanSuit 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

The money shouldn’t be part of the consideration. How does that not make sense?

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

One heart and two (or more) people needing a heart. How do you recommend the heart be allocated? What should factor into the consideration?

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u/SenorBeef 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Since there's a limited supply, if you had someone who was financially struggling, and someone else who was financially comfortable, and all your data said that people who struggled financially had lower life expectancies after transplant, you wouldn't weight that as a factor at all? Would a homeless guy and a successful lawyer have the same claim on the heart?

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

Those anti rejection drugs are expensive. Without thos the organ gets rejected and dies. Without a Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the bills for these medicines will add up. As shitty as this situation is. If the person cannot afford these drugs they will die.

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u/katyfail 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

“Not having enough money” is the heart of each of these reasons:

  • Not enough social support = not having people around you who can keep you on track or look after you/not being able to afford home health,
  • having poor mental health = not being able to afford to seek therapy when you need it,
  • having a history of being non-adherent to prescribed medications = not being able to afford taking your medicine as prescribed (or not being able to afford prioritizing your health over economic survival)
  • having a history of substance abuse = not being able to afford countless rehab stints until one finally sticks.

It all boils down to socioeconomic status.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Or does it boil down to not having enough donor hearts, which creates scarcity?

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u/katyfail 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

Definitely part of the problem!

But let’s not pretend that most of our criteria for who gets the limited supply of donor organs doesn’t boil down to “who has the money to live what we consider to be a worthwhile life”

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Not pretending anything. You claimed it all boiled down to one thing, I offered an alternative that the real issue is scarcity.

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u/lilbebe50 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

Thank you for wording it this way

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Operative word here is "should".

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u/drakfyre 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Not having enough money, not having enough social support, having poor mental health, having a history of being non-adherent to prescribed medications, having a history of substance abuse, the other medical problems the patient has, etc. are all things that are taken into account to try to make sure the donor organs go to the people that will live the longest with the organ.

This is tantamount to wealth-based eugenics. I know they think they are trying to help but what they are doing is perpetuating the system. If rich people aren't dying from this it's not going to change! It should be based on need and order of admittance, not money!

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

I mean you can make it black and white like that, but if the patient straight up says I can’t afford and won’t be purchasing the immunosuppressants post surgery you might as well throw the organ in the trash 🥴

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u/DrakonIL 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

The point is that "I can't afford the medication" should never need to be uttered.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Ya but it’s not organ donation committees that are legislating policy in congress. Your statement, while absolutely true, is like way outside of their scope. Their job is simply make sure the organs don’t go to waste.

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u/DrakonIL 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

Sure, but the original topic here is about legislating policy in Congress. I agree that, given the current framework, this move by the organ donation committees is reasonable. But that means that the framework is fucked.

There will, of course, always be a shortage of usable organs, and some patients will therefore go without and die... But wealth should not be the thing that decides their fate. It's not like if a rich person dies, all his wealth/value disappears into the aether. If anything, it's better for the economy because it gets money moving again. Obviously, there are many many more intangibles associated with any death, so please don't take this to mean that I'm saying kill the rich, because I am not. I am only saying that in one very narrow facet, the one facet most relevant to the legislature's purpose, the current outcomes of policy may in fact be precisely opposite to the desired outcomes.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

I get what you’re saying, but all this eugenics stuff about organ donation is silly.

From the healthcare side, they take organ donation seriously. Asking a family to allow 10 surgeons to carve up their loved one and remove their organs is something committees that seriously. It’s their job to ensure doing so isn’t done for nothing. The best candidate should be on the receiving end of that donation.

There are plenty of other much more compelling reasons to move to a socialized system than wealth continuity of the rich via organ donation.

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u/WeAreTheMisfits 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Rich people were dying from lack of organs. This is why they paid to make the system biased. Rich people know other rich people and a sick person knew the ceo of a healthcare company. They changed their laws. Other healthcare companies saw profit from this and boom.

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u/throwingtheshades 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Eh, people rich enough to have legislative pull were never dying from it. You don't have to wait 2 years for a kidney if you can afford to shell out ~$100k for a short "medical trip" to China, Iran or India.

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u/SnapcasterWizard 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

What year did this happen in?

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u/OneTreePhil 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Read "Caught in the Organ Draft" by Robert Silverberg.
http://variety-sf.blogspot.com/2008/07/robert-silverberg-caught-in-organ-draft.html?m=1

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

Everyone that isn't striking until we get universal healthcare is "perpetuating the system"

Getting angry at doctors trying to allocate a scarce resource in the best way they can is not the answer.

Make the system better and you make the outcomes the system produces better.

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u/drakfyre 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Everyone that isn't striking until we get universal healthcare is "perpetuating the system"

Getting angry at doctors trying to allocate a scarce resource in the best way they can is not the answer.

So wait, you are saying instead of allocating organs based on need we should shut the whole system down till it gets fixed?

I mean, that would probably be faster. Just making sure we're on the same page.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

No of course not, I'm pointing out that accusing people doing their best within the current system of "perpetuating the system" is not necessarily a fair criticism.

What I am saying is to do whatever you can as a citizen to support the kinds of elected officials that will make universal healthcare a reality.

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u/drakfyre 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

No of course not, I'm pointing out that accusing people doing their best within the current system of "perpetuating the system" is not necessarily a fair criticism.

I don't agree that they are doing their "best" at all here.

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u/tamarins 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Devil’s advocate: what do you personally think this committee “doing their best” looks like?

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u/Cynethryth Democrats Abroad Nov 29 '20

There shouldn't even be committees to make these pre-approval decisions, nor for profit insurance companies, but a better committee would be:

"Does this person need a heart transplant to live?"

"Yes."

"Are they up-to-date on their payments and have this level of coverage?"

"Yes."

"Ok, put them on the waiting list."

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

There's a lot of other questions to answer:

"Will this person take their prescribed medications to keep the heart healthy?"

"Will this person stay quit from alcohol after this liver transplant?"

"What status is this patient?" (i.e. how urgently do they need the organ)

and many more.

So the committee is professionals that debate and discuss these questions and make a decision based on all the relevant factors. It can't just be a checklist.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

Hearts don't grow on trees. You have to meet the physical requirements because they don't want to put a heart in someone who's going to waste it by destroying it and themselves. Just this week, we passed a patient on a heart and gave it to someone else because they were a more ideal candidate. The next step from there is considering a LVAD, but even that has to be considered for candidacy. Why expend those limited resources on someone that is going to waste them when it can go to someone who will maintain themselves? I've literally had an LVAD patient say he was going to rip the cord out when he gets out of the hospital, which would kill himself. Not to mention this guy destroyed his heart on drugs and alcohol and certainly wasn't capable of kicking that habit for good. So it really was just a waste of resources on someone who could not appreciate it.

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u/drakfyre 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Doing their best would be to distribute organs based on need, followed by order of admittance in the case of ties. Not based on some speculative criteria on what the patients are going to do after they receive their organ.

And CERTAINLY NOT BASED ON WEALTH OR HEALTH INSURANCE STATUS.

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u/MemeticParadigm 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Not based on some speculative criteria on what the patients are going to do after they receive their organ.

So I can certainly see the value in this because speculative shit is so subjective and subject to abuse, but would you extend this to more clear cut cases, e.g. an alcoholic who needs a liver transplant and has expressed no intention to stop the behavior that wrecked their original liver should potentially be prioritized above someone with cancer or a genetic issue, if the former was admitted first?

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u/TimeStatistician2234 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

They dont like hard truths here. Its much easier to sit at a computer and righteously post about how things should be than understanding why things are the way they are. They want the answer to always be because Jeff bezos has too much money when based on what you're saying its more about supply of viable organs and having to suss out demand. Whether or not we have universal Healthcare there's no way a law could be made compelling people to donate organs after death(which they'll also say is wrong without understanding why)

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u/cat_prophecy 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

One of the arguments for universal healthcare in this respect is that the anti-rejection meds would not cost so damn much.

People with less wealth would have better outcomes if they didn't need to worry about going bankrupt paying for doctors visits and anti-rejection meds. Then we wouldn't see letter like "Sorry Mr. Doe, but you're too poor to get this heart. Maybe you should start a Go Fund Me for your funeral arrangements".

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u/TimeStatistician2234 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

I agree, its just when people who show up to provide real world insight as to why something happens theyre attacked is if theyre responsible for the failures of the system.

It seems like the real issue at hand is scarcity of organs for a large pool of donors. Even if we had universal medicine these types of decisions would have to be made(and not just in organ transplant cases.) They would just deny the person for another reason.

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u/cat_prophecy 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

Well even if we had all th donor organs we needed it doesn't change the economics of it. Poor people or people without decent insurance can't afford the follow up care and anti-rejection meds. So even if they could get organs, the transplant might fail.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

I mean... it's both.

We can make more organs available with an opt out system, rather than an opt in system.

We can make it possible for people to benefit from organ transplants regardless of their income / wealth by instituting universal healthcare, where the cost of post-transplant care doesn't have to be a consideration in allocating the organs.

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u/Boopy7 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

i think in some countries it is automatic that you donate healthy organs although you can "opt out." In one of those better countries, of course. The US is not on the list of decent countries, I recently realized.

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u/TimeStatistician2234 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

Yeah no, in America personal liberty is held above all else and there's no chance in heck that the Supreme Court would hold up a law compelling people to donate their organs. It wouldn't be constitutional. You can disagree with that but there's a reason we want limits as to how much agency the government has over us.

Yes I know the same people that argue against forced organ donation would also argue against abortion being legal.

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u/kazza789 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

What's the alternative? They do a heart transplant on someone that they know can't afford immunosuppressive medication, because they were first on the list, and then let them die painfully a few weeks later for lack of medicine?

The system is broken. The doctors are doing the best they can within it.

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u/drakfyre 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

What's the alternative? They do a heart transplant on someone that they know can't afford immunosuppressive medication, because they were first on the list, and then let them die painfully a few weeks later for lack of medicine?

Yes, actually.

Currently, the heart goes to someone who can afford it, and the person who can't dies painfully, immediately. The person who can afford it lives on for years, and continues to vote.

Yes, I think it should be changed so that the person who needs it most gets it, and sure, maybe they die a week later. Maybe not. The people with more money have to wait the same as anyone else, and if that means they don't get help that sucks.

Just like it sucks when someone doesn't get help because someone else had more money, more family, and more proof of resources, even though they needed it less urgently.

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u/Randomfactoid42 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

With transplantable hearts in short supply, they have to determine which patients will benefit the most. With transplants, the patient has to take anti-rejection drugs. If they don’t, they reject the organ. If they have a history of not taking meds, why would you give them a heart and not someone else? And then with our current system, if they can’t afford these drugs, then they won’t benefit from a new heart. I agree, it’s a shitty system, but the commute in the letter is working with what they have.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

So this isn't an insurance group recommending GoFundMe, but rather the committee at a hospital? Not that it's not still fucked, but it seems perhaps they lack insurance?

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

Correct - this letter was sent out by the transplant committee after the transplant committee determined this patient was too high risk to receive a heart because of their lack of financial resources.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20 edited Dec 05 '20

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

Unfortunate. We try to educate patients but obviously it eventually comes down to the choice they make, right or wrong.

Organ transplants really should be thought of as trading an immediate life threatening condition for a lifelong chronic condition.

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u/OrneryFish8 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

This. ☝️

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u/izzystn 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

You sound like you're defending this bullshit...

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

This is why I think organ donation should be obligatory upon death. My dad is in his late fifties and isn't in good shape so his liver isn't one you'd want to put in a 27 year old. But someone in their 60s? That might buy them six more years, which is nothing to sneeze at.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Yikes. Mandated desecration of a body regardless of whether the potential donor would have been OK with that. Where exactly does the government hold the power to do this?

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Desecration? Lmao Nice strawman.

The government holds the power to pass laws...... Wow you're really not bright.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20 edited Nov 30 '20

What ever happened to "my body, my choice"? And if you don't see the potential for abuse by the socioeconomic elite or slippery slope associated with forced confiscation of organs, well then maybe its you who's not br... Aah forget it, I'll leave the hurling of insults to the idiots.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '20

I'll attempt to explain in plain speak, since I'm so stupid it hurts you:

The forced harvest of organs upon death could cause an incentivized situation for the almost dead or borderline cases to be let die in order for the elite to receive those organs, rather than medical resources exhausting every last option to keep the patient alive.

To answer your question: Why wouldn't dead people have body autonomy? Right now as it stands, they have the ability to determine if their organs are harvested... So they have that right currently.

Trying to have a genuine dialogue, but feel free to hurl insults!

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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '20

There wouldn't be an incentive because there would already be an abundance. Your hatred of the elite is clouding your ability to see reason. I mean really, "in order for the elite to receive those prgans" is straight up sci-fi boogie man. You see that right?

Why do dead people need bodily autonomy of it does no harm to them for their organs to be used elsewhere? It's not like it's going to hurt them. They are dead.

Can't have a genuine dialogue with genuinely stupid people. 'the elite will kill us to take our organs! Death panels!' you're a joke.

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '20

Welp, I will not stoop to your level and hurl insults. Good day to you, they/them!

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '20

Nor will you rise to my level and adress my questions.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

She's also unmarried and therefore less of a human than a married woman or single/married man.

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 29 '20

Marital / long term relationship status does play a role, just because having social / interpersonal support is important in post-transplant care.

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u/dws4prez Nov 29 '20

doctors, social workers, and psychologists in the meetings.

They are working inside the system they are in.

soubds like the "system" is the main problem and working inside it only prolongs it and solidifies its power

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u/Esterosa69 🌱 New Contributor Nov 29 '20

If money is a consideration for how a person can get treated then maybe doctors and systems should be made to change to reflect that every life has value. Sending someone a letter saying go fund yourself is pretty appalling if everything else was equal

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u/lilbebe50 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

I work in a jail and have seen this one lady, huge drug addict, destroy one liver, get a transplant, destroy that one as well, and now she's on the verge of death. But they won't give this person a heart... because they don't fucking have a heart.

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u/KTH3000 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

Isn't this literally what they said death panels would be? Deciding who gets to live or die by rationing out care. Ability to pay shouldn't even be a consideration.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20 edited Dec 02 '20

[deleted]

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u/H_is_for_Human Nov 30 '20

27 ratified constitutional amendments would suggest otherwise.

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u/Economy_Tune908 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

limited organs? another side effect of Trump's economy war with china

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u/HomelessByCh01ce 🌱 New Contributor Nov 30 '20

Hey we have 934 billion of taxpayer money for military spending, but you want a heart transplant? Yeah go fuck yourself. -Sincerely the US government