Hedda Martin, 60, survived breast cancer but the medication damaged her heart. Now she has to survive Spectrum Health. The west Michigan-based managed health care organization suggested she should fundraise because they were concerned she didn't have the money for post-surgery medication. Without that there would be no heart transplant. And without that...
Hedda did so, setting up a GoFundMe page with her son, but complaining on her Facebook page and elsewhere of the badly broken health care system in the United States. With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others retweeting her message, Martin was able to get to required funding in a matter of hours.
Here's the link. Hedda needs a heart transplant
https://www.gofundme.com/hedda-needs-a-heart-transplant
Source: WHTC, Holland, Michigan
The letter Grand Rapids-area resident Hedda Martin, 60, received delivered devastating news. Her impending heart transplant candidacy wouldn't move forward, the letter stated, because she didn't have the cash to pay for post-surgery medication.
"The committee is recommending a fundraising effort of $10,000," the letter said, signed by a clinical transplant coodinator at Spectrum Health Richard DeVos Heart and Lung Transplant Clinic in Grand Rapids.
Privacy laws prevent the hospital on verifying the letter, according to spokewoman Beth Cranson, but the hospital did issue a statement related to transplants, which said, in part: "While it is always upsetting when we cannot provide a transplant, we have an obligation to ensure that transplants are successful and that donor organs will remain viable. We thoughtfully review candidates for heart and lung transplant procedures with care and compassion, and these are often highly complex, difficult decisions." The full statement is contained in this story.
Not from an insurer, but a 'transplant committee'. This thread goes into some detail of how these things work, or as in this case, don't work.
And if the name in Spectrum Health Richard DeVos Heart and Lung Transplant Clinic sounds familiar, yes, that is the same family of billionaires that current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos comes from, with Richard ("Dick") her husband.
