Broken U.S. Health Care & Greedy Pharmaceutical Companies, Just Hit Home!

Check this article out.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20090907/ai_n35617944/

My cousin who is a few years older than me, age 36, has been battling cancer and remission for a while. He’s been on a bone marrow transplant waiting list and finally was able to find a match down in Texas last week. Just as he and Tammie [his wife] thought he was in the clear, he’s developed a rare blood cancer that destroys the healthy red blood cells that the bone marrow transplant sought to rectify. The marrow treatments may have indirectly caused the blood cancer, according to his docs at MD Anderson Cancer Center. The Huntsman Cancer Center in Utah was not able to help or figure this out.

This article was in the Deseret News, SLC’s big newspaper. The thing that struck me the most about this was the rallying of the neighborhood where they live, the immediate and extended families, coworkers to Eric and Tammie, and complete strangers to try and help him get though this emotionally and financially.

The reason I’m sharing, is how much of this financial burden is caused by a broken health care system, and a pharmaceutical system in it for profit? He has a second chance of life with this transplant, but out of pocket costs for the medicines are in excess of $4K for only a 30 day supply of meds. Would these types of things have better coverage under a reformed health care initiative? Who knows?

The scary thing is that Eric is a UT state employee, and supposedly has good state health care coverage, UNTIL they recently changed it last year given Utah’s state budget deficit. Given the severity of his situation, the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are now NOT stepping up. They more than likely will be financially ruined over this.

Hopefully something comes out of pending national health care reform. How many peoples lives need to be destroyed over skyrocketing health care costs and pharmaceutical costs?

This is absolutely ridiculous and makes my blood BOIL!