My Cure is Killing Me

Amanda Luker

My Cure is Killing Me
Three year ago, while living in Madrid, Eric Trump discovered that his already weak kidney was failing. He was faced with complicated weekly dialysis treatments or finding a donor for a transplant. His aunt volunteered, and he went through with the operation, not realizing this was just the beginning of his problems.

'For the rest of my life,' he writes in George magazine, 'I would be joined at the hip to the pharmaceutical industry, whose discoveries were and are in large part responsible for this, my life's encore.'

Today, to keep his body from rejecting the new kidney and his immune system functioning, he takes a pharmacy's worth of drugs. Unpacking a large box of bottles, he listed off the names: 'First out was a month's supply of a smoky green pill called Cytovene. Then came CellCept of the blue-and-orange capsule, pink Procardia and Xantax, tiny Prednisone, milky Mycostatin, Bactrim, and, lastly, carton after carton of shark-gray, beer-scented Cyclosporine.' This box would last him a few months; the itemized bill at the bottom of the box read a grand total of $3,047.38.

Like millions of other Americans, Trump fell into the medical purgatory of being too poor to afford private insurance, but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Before the transplant he went without medical coverage for three months, relying on the good will of the medical community, who provided him with free samples and 'recycled' drugs donated by families of those who had already passed on. Trump's incredible story makes a strong argument for implementing a universal health care system. 'The promise of America's medical technology,' he scolds, 'will be a mark of shame until all Americans--including the 15 percent (and counting) now uninsured--have access to it.'
--Amanda Luker