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A hospital system based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, refused a heart transplant to a troubled 60-year-old woman, recommending that she first try to raise $ 10,000.
In a November 20 letter to social media, a nurse from Spectrum Health's Heart & Lung specialty care clinics informed the patient that a heart transplant committee had determined that she was not eligible. for the transplant because she needed safer funding the expensive immunosuppressive drugs needed to prevent her body from rejecting the new organ.
"The committee recommends a fundraiser of $ 10,000," wrote the nurse.
The patient, Hedda Martin from Grand Rapids, reportedly posted Spectrum's rejection letter on her personal Facebook page.
The letter was posted on social media over the weekend, including the actions of the new US Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a single payer health insurance lawyer, who confused Spectrum with a insurance company in his tweet.
Other commentators on Twitter have compared the health system transplant committee to a "committee of death".
A Spectrum representative was not available Sunday for an interview, but the health system issued a general statement on the situation on his website, noting that he was not commenting on specific cases to protect the private life.
"Although it is always disturbing to be unable to provide a transplant, we have an obligation to ensure that transplants are completed and that the donor organs remain viable," the statement said. "We carefully examine candidates for cardiac and pulmonary transplantation procedures with care and compassion, and these decisions are often very complex and difficult.Although our primary goal is to meet the patient's medical needs, the fact is that transplants require lifelong care and immunosuppression medications, and as a result, costs are sometimes a regrettable and unavoidable factor in the decision-making process. "
Martin's son, Alex Britt, created a GoFundMe page that Monday morning raised more than $ 15,000 for the anti-rejection drug.
The page indicates that Martin is suffering from life-threatening congestive heart failure due to heart damage caused by chemotherapy for breast cancer in 2005.
She is unable to work since 2017 and needs a ventricular assist pump implanted in her body as "bridge" until she can get a new heart.
"The heart transplant team reunited and decided that his mother needed to raise $ 10,000 to be able to consider a new heart," the son wrote. "The transplant team does not want to" waste "a vital organ if it can not afford drugs for heart rejection."
Neither Martin nor his son could be reached for comment on Sunday.
Mlive said that a publication on Martin's Facebook page had been canceled, saying that Spectrum wanted to make sure it could afford the monthly cost of the $ 700 anti-rejection drugs, knowing that its diet plan was $ 200. Medicare provides a deductible of $ 4,500 per year.
Martin's insurance would likely cover the total cost of the drugs once she reaches the deductible.
Copyright 2017 USATODAY.com
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