Pigs and man. Closer than you know.

 

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” 

 Winston Churchill

My late father had a heart valve replacement around twenty years ago. I was surprised that the valve came from a pig. We were talking about it, and he mentioned the valve cost 17K. My response was, "DAMN! I'd hate to see how much a ham sandwich cost from the animal."

Now I know this was not an animal from the ranch down the highway, but a specially bread animal. Hey, it saved his life, and gave him a few more good years. I've been a registered organ donor for ages, and encourage everyone to do the same. Hey, you don't need them after you pass.

Now I saw this article in the paper a few days ago, and I gotta say I'm happy this could be an option for people in the future. 

Pig kidneys implanted in a brain-dead patient

By Roni Caryn Rabin NEW YORK TIMES

Surgeons at the University of Alabama at Birmingham reported Thursday that they had for the first time successfully transplanted kidneys from a genetically modified pig into the abdomen of a 57-year-old brain-dead man.

The announcement was the latest in a series of remarkable feats in organ transplantation. Earlier this month, surgeons at the University of Maryland transplanted a heart from a genetically modified pig into a 57-year-old patient with heart failure. That patient is still alive and under observation.

In September, surgeons at NYU Langone Health attached a kidney from a genetically modified pig to a brain-dead individual who was being maintained on a ventilator. Although it remained outside the body, the kidney worked normally, making urine and creatinine, a waste product.

The UAB surgery was reported in the American Journal of Transplantation, the first time a pig-to-human organ transplantation has been described in a peer-reviewed medical journal...

That's nothing short of incredible. Replacement of the heart with a pig organ, and hopefully this eases the shortage of organs we have. 

More than 500,000 Americans have end-stage kidney disease and depend on dialysis. A transplant is the best treatment for kidney failure, but an acute shortage of donor organs leaves that option out of reach for the vast majority of patients.

More than 90,000 people were on waiting lists for a kidney as of last summer. The wait can be long: Fewer than 25,000 kidney transplants are done in the United States each year, and more than a dozen people on the waiting list die each day.

Well, if people could sell their organs, that will ease that shortage. If the family could sell the kidneys, livers, heart, eyes, etc of their their deceased loved one, it will help countless people. And the bureaucracy that manages organ transfers, etc, will not have a choke hold on the supply. Remember, telephone service was do much better with Ma Bell, right? 

I do feel their pain...

The nation is pole vaulting over a tick turd, and they are having to deal with everyone telling them they are wrong.

As we have come to the latest crisis of the month, everyone is screaming "We gonna die..." etc, time for some amusement. A complaint from many cops, whenever the latest police issue is in the news, Facebook experts and YouTube specialists come out and tell law enforcement how to do their job. Or not do it, but no ideas how to do it.

Well, not the docs and medics have to deal with that crap. Stolen from a friend's Facebook page.

Who is trying to lower health care and health insurance cost...

I've made the point countless times that Obamacare has one purpose. It is the bridge to single payer. And thanks to John McCain (rest in piss you POS), the repeal try failed in 2017. But there is some new hope.

As a boss of mine once said, "You eat the elephant one bite at a time." And the GOP seems to be doing that.

The GOP Is Making Health Care Great Again

...While Obamacare has been neither repealed nor replaced, it is being superseded. As President Donald Trump said, “We will deliver relief to American workers, families, and small businesses, who right now are being crushed by Obamacare, by increasing freedom, choice, and opportunity for the American people.”

The total number of Americans with health insurance rose from 292.3 million in 2016 to 294.6 million in 2017, the Census Bureau reports. Some of the following new reforms have helped 2.3 million more Americans enjoy medical coverage and alternatives under Republican leadership rather than Democrat mismanagement.

- Republicans last December “ended the unfair individual-mandate penalty” under Obamacare, President Trump observed. “People are paying a lot of money for the privilege of not paying a lot of money for bad health care. And we’ve ended it.” Every single Democrat in Congress opposed individual-mandate repeal, which was part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

- Trump signed legislation in February to repeal the Independent Payments Advisory Board, also known as the “Death Panel,” that would have rationed Obamacare. IPAB is dead and threatens no one.

- As promised, Trump signed the Right to Try Act on May 30. Terminally ill Americans who have exhausted other options now are free to use drugs that have passed the FDA’s Phase 1 safety trials but not yet passed effectiveness tests. The FDA’s “compassionate use” program only helped some 1,200 patients annually, the White House estimates. It added: “‘Right to Try’ gives the over 1 million Americans who die from a terminal illness every year a new tool to fight and make potentially lifesaving decisions about their treatment.”

“People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure,” Trump said. “I want to give them a chance right here at home.”

The U.S. House’s roll call on this measure showed the parties’ true colors.

All 228 Republicans present voted for the Right to Try on May 22. But only 22 Democrats voted yes. The other 169 voted to deprive terminally ill Americans of the experimental drugs that might keep them alive. California’s Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters, Maryland’s Steny Hoyer, and New York’s Jerrold Nadler were among the pharmo-totalitarians who did not let even these imminent deaths tame their lust to control others...

I am not surprised. Remember in 2008, B Hussein Obama told a woman it was better to "take a pill." I wonder if he will expect that for his wife, mother-in-law, or daughter.

More reforms that are chipping away at Obamacare:

-The Trump administration in June authorized “association health plans.” Entrepreneurs, small employers, and civic organizations (e.g., the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Small Business Association of Michigan) now may join hands and insure their employees and members, including across state lines.

Last summer, the administration extended the duration of short-term, limited health plans from three months to one year, with renewals permitted up to three years. In essence, Team Trump increased twelve-fold the allowable length of short-term policies. “For example, according to E-Health, the average lowest premium for an Obamacare plan for a 40-year-old woman is about $4,200 per year,” Trump noted. “By contrast, the average lowest premium for short-term coverage for this individual is about $1,300 a year — a savings of $3,000,” or 69 percent off.
These plans are cheaper because they lack many of Obamacare’s costly, needless, and foolish mandates. Every Obamacare plan must include pediatric vision coverage — even if the policy holder is childless, sterile, and mortally terrified of small, screaming objects.

The GOP’s cost-cutting, liberty-expanding dynamic contrasts vividly with the Democrats’ cruel, truncheon-wielding approach. As Health Secretary Alex Azar wrote in the Washington Post on August 15: “Such plans were offered for terms of up to 12 months for decades until, in an effort to push Americans into Obamacare, the previous administration restricted the plans to 90 days and prohibited insurers from renewing them beyond that time period.”

The administration in August required hospitals to post the prices of their procedures online and update them annually. Patients will be able to shop around when deciding where to get treated. Such competition should slow or even counteract medical-cost inflation...

As my friend Ed P, who put this article up on Facebook first said, these are small steps. I reminded him of the Chinese saying, "A journey of one-thousand miles begins with the first step."

Here's to a lot more steps on the road to the reform of heath care and health insurance.