On Oct. 20, 1972, Nixon signed H.R. 1 into law. The law automatically qualified anyone with chronic renal disease, anyone who would need a kidney transplant, for Medicare, regardless of age.
So Medicare covers transplants and post care for a period and I was eligible even at my relatively young age, early 30s.
That said, the poor life choices that I made that led to needing the transplants also left me in a pretty big financial hole before healthcare and I had a month long hospital stay long before the transplant when I first got really sick.
In the end I filed for bankruptcy to free myself from the medical debt but also to get a clean start on the life I fucked up.
Even with the existing social safety nets it’s incredibly easy to go broke with our healthcare system.
Kind of. The hospitals and clinics don’t want that, in part because a sick patient is a revenue stream and in part because I’m sure a lot of medical professionals genuinely care about their patients.
I’d say the health insurance companies are more interested in a sick patient’s death. They’d prefer healthy people paying premiums but not having a lot of claims. It increases their profits.