What is Medicare?

Medicare is a health insurance program that is Federally funded to help people who are sixty-five or older, have a disability, or have End Stage Renal Disease. You can find out more Medicare basics on the Medicare Web site. My husband has had End Stage Renal Disease, so we have some experience with Medicare. He found out at the age of 25, out of the blue, that his kidneys had failed.

If you are a regular reader of this blog you might remember that I have mentioned before that my husband has had a kidney transplant. It will be two years in February that mark the time he received a kidney transplant after waiting on the list for 6 long years. Throughout the time he was waiting on a kidney, he received dialysis treatments. These are a necessity if you have End Stage Renal Disease. Dialysis treatments occurred three times per week, every week, every month, of every year. It was not a choice. When we would go on vacation, he had dialysis. If he were to fall sick, he still had to do dialysis. No matter what! The amazing thing is that the day my husband got his kidney transplant was the day that my child’s heart started beating. I didn’t know that I was pregnant at the time, but it is something that we will always remember fondly.

Medicare always helped to pay for the costs of his dialysis treatments that were not covered by our insurance. Our experience with Medicare has only been positive. If we did not have Medicare, there is no way we would have been able to afford the cost of a transplant. Fortunately my husband did have insurance at the time of the transplant, and still does, but even with that we would be paying for his transplant for the rest of our lives. Medicare helped take some of the stress out of an already stressful situation- getting an organ transplant. Medicare has made a big difference in our lives.

This is a sponsored post. Thanks for reading!