OUT OF POCKET CASH PLUS
Virtually all of the nation’s more than 250 transplant centers, which refer patients to a single national registry, require patients to verify how they will cover bills that can total $400,000 for a kidney transplant or $1.3 million for a heart, plus monthly costs that average $2,500 for anti-rejection drugs that must be taken for life, Caplan said. “It happens every day,” said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the New York University Langone Medical Center.
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But requiring proof of payment for organ transplants and post-operative care is common, transplant experts say. Martin’s case sparked outrage over a transplant system that links access to a lifesaving treatment to finances. “And then for that person to have to be a fundraiser?” Mannion, 59, who received his new lungs in May 2017, reflected: “Here you are, you need a heart - that’s a tough road for any person,” he said. From the start, hospital officials told him to set aside $30,000 in a separate bank account to cover the costs. Two years ago, Mannion, of Oxford, Conn., learned he needed a double-lung transplant after contracting idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive, fatal disease. Through a transplant fundraising organization, HelpHopeLive, he has raised nearly $115,000, twice the original goal to help pay expenses that insurance didn’t cover, including copays for costly anti-rejection drugs.
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Patrick Mannion received a double-lung transplant in May 2017 after being diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive, life-threatening lung disease.