Black Market Blood Products

On a muggy July evening, I discovered something that I never would have dreamt in a million years.  I was sitting in the back seat of a silver car, when we pulled up to the front of an apartment building.  There were no street lights around so the lighting was dim.  A gentleman wearing black clothes and a shaved head approached the car with two Ziplock bags in hand.  His elbows leaned up against the window during the whole transaction.  Nonchalantly the front seat passenger handed him $80 in exchange for the two baggies.  The clear bags had small white boxes in them, and they were stuffed full with about ten or twelve boxes combined.

I knew it wasn’t illegal drugs like weed or coke in the bags.  It wasn’t until I was introduced to the man in black as a fellow hemophiliac that I realized what was traded was a couple bags of Kogenate, a blood clotting product.  I had just witnessed a black market transaction of recombinant Factor.

For those who aren’t familiar with hemophilia and the healthcare costs, hemophilia is second only to multiple sclerosis in costs of healthcare coverage, ranging upwards to $200,000 per year, assuming nothing is wrong physically.  And I came to find out later in the evening that the man receiveing the products had just lost his job and his insurance.  I was under the impression that there were many programs in the state of Indiana that allowed hemophiliacs to continue to receive Factor even if insurance was not available, but I guess he had already exhausted most of those options.  It is just too expensive to go those routes despite Indiana being one of the best states to live in if you have hemophilia.

All I have to say is that this really sucks.  I could gripe and moan about how society has messed up because we concentrate more on leaving no child behind but can’t provide honest healthcare for everyone, but I don’t think that will help me this time.  I hate to see people hurt and he was really in need of this Factor.  He was icing his swollen ankle the whole time we were over at his place, and he in infused as soon as we got back.  It sometimes sucks to be a bleeder!!