The US Senate passed a bill yesterday to provide immunosuppressive drugs post-transplant for life. Previously, Medicare only pays for three years of medication post-transcript. For patients that won’t qualify for Medicare after that date, they have to find their own insurance or risk losing their transplanted kidney. I read that about 375 patients die each year from losing Medicare and not being able to afford the needed medication. This is supposed to save $400M over 10 years since thousands of patients can avoid a return to dialysis, which is also paid for by Medicare.
For me personally, this means I can consider retiring post-transplant. I’m in my early 50’s so if I go through the transplant soon, I will run out of Medicare coverage in my mid-50’s and need to find insurance coverage for 10+ years. That typically means getting a job and work-provided insurance. I do need to find out if Medicare will only pay for immunosuppressive drugs or will they continue as my primary health insurance, paying for 80% of all claims.
Life with chronic diseases 