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HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES SCREW ORGAN DONORS
Fox - Kidney donors may be stuck with shocking medical bills because having one kidney could constitute a pre-existing condition resulting in a denial of health care coverage, according to UPI .
Donors getting billed for transplant-related care has been a national problem for years, Donna Luebke, a nurse practitioner in cardiology at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, told the American Statesman .
"Right now it is the issue for living donors in this country," Luebke said. "I know of donors who have paid thousands of dollars out of pocket for complications."
Luebke added that as Congress debates reform of the health care system, it should require Medicare to ascertain that donors are covered, as provided by a 1972 law , regardless of states' conflicting policies.
Donors getting billed for transplant-related care has been a national problem for years, Donna Luebke, a nurse practitioner in cardiology at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, told the American Statesman .
"Right now it is the issue for living donors in this country," Luebke said. "I know of donors who have paid thousands of dollars out of pocket for complications."
Luebke added that as Congress debates reform of the health care system, it should require Medicare to ascertain that donors are covered, as provided by a 1972 law , regardless of states' conflicting policies.
2 Comments:
No good deed goes unpunished.
It is definitely true. I donated the right lobe of my liver to try and save my mother's life back in 2002 at Columbia Pres. Hospital in NY. I was never told by anyone on the staff about possible problems with health insurance. For years I have been paying over $300 more a month for coverage than if I didn't have that pre-existing condition. Granted I did have two more operations for complications from the liver operation in the following 8 months. Columbia did pay for most of the cost of those operations, but my doctor did charge my health insurance at the time. I was also told by both my doctor and the coordinating nurse not to be expected to have the hospital cover me for "all my health issue in the future." I told them if it was related to the organ donation operation, I thought they were morally obligated to do so. I guess they felt every extra penny they had to spend on my followup complications was taking away from their profit margin of the original charge they received for the original operation which was between 400 and $500,000 thousand dollars. I was also told by their billing dept. that I was the only one that had ever had major complications from one of their liver donor operations. I think they should be proud of that statistic, although they did not include me on the research study about longterm complications from donors that they were a part of the following year. I guess they just forgot.
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