Political Quotes

“today I am introducing the ``Comprehensive Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage for Kidney Transplant Patients Act'' with my colleagues Senators Cochran, Levin, Cardin, Schumer, Inouye, and Brown of Massachusetts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 13 percent of American adults, 26 million people, have chronic kidney disease. Some of these individuals can improve their condition with medication and lifestyle changes, but approximately half a million of them have irreversible kidney failure, or end-stage renal disease, ESRD. These patients require dialysis or a kidney transplant to survive. Organ transplantation is a medical success story. Thousands of transplants are done every year, and for the patients fortunate enough to receive a donated organ, the quality and length of their lives can be dramatically improved. Of the more than 28,000 transplants performed in 2010, over 16,898 of them were kidney transplants. A large portion of these kidney transplants were paid for by the Medicare system, which provides healthcare to aged and disabled Americans, as well as those living with ESRD. Medicare also covers dialysis for patients who have not received a donor kidney and immunosuppressive drugs for kidney transplant recipients. Organ transplant recipients must take immunosuppressive drugs every day for the life of their transplant to reduce the risk of organ rejection.…”