Randy Carder’s Million Dollar Deal
By Pat Hayes
Last August, when Randy Carder got the bad news, he was already prepped for surgery and lying on the gurney that would take him into the operating theater at the Nebraska Medical Center for the liver transplant he hoped would save his life.
By then, he was used to bad news. The 53-year-old Carder, who does paint, polish and repair work on Ford Escapes being assembled at the sprawling Kansas City Assembly Plant, received a tainted blood transfusion following an auto accident in the late ‘70s that left him with a serious blood disease. Antiviral medications intended to clear the virus from his body hadn’t worked. By 1998, the chronic infection was attacking his internal organs and doctors told him he had cirrhosis of the liver. As the disease progressed he developed four tumors on his liver. Then, in 2011, he learned he had stage IV liver cancer and needed a transplant to stay alive.
Carder had already made the three-and-a-half hour drive from Kearney, Mo. to the transplant center in Omaha once, the previous May, only to learn that the liver he hoped to get wasn’t suitable. There was nothing to do. “We just had to turn around and go home,” says the mild-mannered Carder, a member of UAW Local 249 who’d spent 11 years working at GM before coming to Ford 18 years ago.
Even though he was fighting for his life, Carder still considered himself one of the luckiest men alive. Unlike an estimated 50 million working age Americans, he had health insurance. And not just any insurance, either. Carder’s UAW-negotiated health insurance through Ford Motor Co. is widely thought to be among the best available. His “Cadillac” coverage meant all those years of blood testing, medications, and hospitalizations had been covered. Moreover, he could afford to go to one of the world’s premier transplant centers.
Carder had something else going for him – Steve Hibbs. Hibbs, a UAW benefits representative, was there every step of the way helping to cut red tape and guide Carder and his wife, Kimberly, through the blizzard of paperwork required to get doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies working together.
Still, his toubles weren’t over. During the summer, flooding on the Missouri River closed I-29 preventing him from reaching the transplant center – and his second chance at a new liver – within the six hour window required of transplant patients in order to insure the donor liver remains healthy.
Lying there in the transplant center, prepped for surgery and hearing doctors tell him that this third liver wasn’t suitable either, Carder was beginning to worry he wouldn’t get a transplant and with it a new lease on life after all. He couldn’t help but wonder if this was his third strike. Time was running out and there was always a danger the cancer could spread. If it did, he’d no longer be a candidate for a transplant. The liver that might save him would go to someone else who had a better chance of survival.
“You can’t yell,” says Carder, who impresses you as the sort of a man who’s never raised his voice, “you can’t make a scene. These people want to help you. They’re doing their best.”
By November 22nd, when the fourth call finally came, Carder was on death’s door. Doctors told him he had just days to live. He was so sick, he can’t remember much of what happened next. He relies on his wife and caregiver, Kimberly, to fill in the missing pieces.
What he does know is, for him, the fourth time was the charm. He finally got his new liver and came home to Kearney the day before Christmas Eve with the best present he’d ever gotten. A new liver, and with it, a new lease on life.
“Kim, the union, my doctors, Ford, and the good Lord,” says Carder, had pulled him through the long ordeal. Carder is firmly convinced that it took a team effort to save his life. Always at his side during the long nightmare, Kimberly played the main role. The experience and skill of his doctors and the staff at the Nebraska Medical Center was absolutely critical to his survival. But his UAW-negotiated health insurance gave him access to those doctors. Steve Hibbs, his union benefits representative, helped clear the hurdles and made sure his insurance paid the bills. And the bills were enormous.
 “It was a million dollar deal,” Carder says, and his insurance paid 100 percent of the cost. The transplant alone cost $450 thousand. Then there were the decades of treatment prior to the transplant – the anti-viral drugs, the blood tests, the scans, the hospital stays, the medications – going  back to that unfortunate auto accident and contaminated blood transfusion in the ‘70s. Carder knows there will be future costs associated with anti-rejection drugs and testing that will last as long as he lives.
“We should be very proud of our union,” Carder says. “If just 25 percent hadn’t been covered we’d have had to mortgage our home to pay for the surgery.” He knows people in his transplant support group who’ve had to do just that.
In the years ahead, President Obama’s Affordable Health Care for America Act should help people who don’t have the kind of health care coverage that saved Randy Carder’s life. Already, the new law allows parents to keep their children covered until they’re 26 years old. As it’s phased in over the next two years, it will extend coverage to millions as most employers are required to provide coverage to their employees. People who’ve been denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition will be able to get coverage and won’t have to pay higher rates because of their gender or medical history. People with life-threatening medical conditions will no longer have to sell their homes or go through bankruptcy to get the kind of care Carder and other UAW members take for granted.
Carder still has a way to go in his recovery. He’s still trying to gain back some of the 50 lbs. he lost during the ordeal, but he’s met people in his support group who are 10 and 20 year survivors of liver transplants and that gives him hope for the future.
Although he’s been on a medical leave of absence since July, Carder is now making plans to come back to work. After all, he’s only 53 and has many productive years ahead of him. He’s not ready to retire. That’s good news to Kim, their three children, and three grandchildren.