Duke Transplant-am I Heartless?

[Sword]

I don't think it's heartless at all. Those are tough questions that need addressed. In fact on 2 other message boards, in threads about the girl I posed the question of how much of her care we the US citizens as taxpayers and insurance premium payers would be flipping the bill for.

I certainly hope the girl survives, and can lead a happy and healthy life. But I also wanted to know who was paying for it all. According to the link you just posted, it says a guy in North Carolina set up a private charity to pay for it. I have a very hard time believing that is completely truthful, and I'll be very surprised if we the US citizens don't end up paying for a portion of it.

And you better believe that we will all be paying to make her familiy multimillionaires when they file their lawsuits for the botched transplant. They'll probably walk away with $50 million dollars from a nice malpractice insurance settlement, and we will all pay for it in the form of high insurance premiums.

Here's a good part from that article:

Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego was forced to close after losing more than $5 million a year in unreimbursed medical care, much of it for illegal immigrants, Times reporter Jerry Seper noted. The Southeast Medical Center in Douglas, Ariz., is on the verge of bankruptcy because of uncompensated care to undocumented aliens; the Cochise County, Ariz., Health Department spends as much as 30 percent of its annual $9 million budget on undocumented aliens; and the University Medical Center in Tucson will spend up to $10 million this year providing uncompensated alien health care.

New York medical providers have performed dozens of organ-transplant operations -- and even sex-change operations -- to illegal aliens. The costs of such "charity" care typically are shifted to insured patients, resulting in higher health insurance premiums.

Next time you write your check for your health insurance premiums, remember this.

Great post Peaches!