When healthcare becomes too expensive, patients are left with no other option but to help themselves. One cancer patient decided to show his doctors that he is perfectly capable of affording his own treatment setup by going on eBay and buying a second-hand chemotherapy machine – which usually costs hospitals over $4,500 – for only $200. The hospital staff was stunned to hear about the bargain, but at least the patient can afford his own chemotherapy now for absolutely no cost!
A Proactive Cancer Patient
After scrolling endlessly through the options offered on the e-commerce website, Steve stumbled upon a deal that seemed too good to be true – someone was actually selling their old chemo pumps for only $200!
62-year-old Steve Brewer has been suffering from bowel cancer since 2014 which means that he has to make frequent trips to the hospital to receive chemotherapy sessions. Cancer treatment isn’t cheap by any means and one chemotherapy machine can cost over $4,500, so when the doctors at the hospital told Steve that the establishment would soon be incapable of affording a triple-pump chemotherapy machine to administer cancer-fighting drugs to patients, the 62-year-old decided to take matters into his own hands and look for cheaper alternatives for the expensive therapy.
So where does one go to look for cheap, second-hand items? The answer lay on Steve’s very own laptop, and with a click of a button, he was able to pull up a long list of vendors on eBay.com selling chemotherapy machines, ranging from brand-new to used ones.
Buying Second-Hand Chemotherapy Machine From eBay
Steve was quick to act. He contacted the Southampton Hospital, which was selling the machine, and set up a meeting to test the device and see if it worked properly. Miraculously, the pumps were in perfect condition and could be used by the staff at the patient’s down-and-out Peterborough City Hospital.
When the doctors found out what the 62-year-old had stumbled upon over the internet, they were pleasantly surprised. One Cancer Patient’s effort was able to save a hospital thousands of dollars as well as help fellow patients in receiving cancer treatment which was previously deemed as too expensive.
Critics of the current healthcare system are now slamming the National Health Service for not being as proactive as Steve for making cancer treatment cheaper and more accessible for patients as well as cash-stripped hospitals like Peterborough City Hospital. Instead on spending a fortune from tax money on buying new chemotherapy machines, NHS could easily find cheaper alternatives if they looked hard enough, like Steve did.
An Effort to Make Cancer Treatment More Affordable
In an interview with Daily Mail, Steve explained that he had seen several second-hand hospital equipment and chemotherapy machines being sold on e-commerce platforms. There are so many hospitals worldwide, and the expensive equipment has to go somewhere after being used, so why not bought by other medical institutions for a fraction of the price? Brewer says that he has received almost 25 sessions of chemotherapy treatment since he was first diagnosed with cancer, and even though he will never be fully cured, the therapy will prevent the disease from progressing any further.
Steve’s chemotherapy sessions usually took more than 4 hours with the single-pump machines that the hospital used
He had found out through his interaction with the nurses that if the hospital had triple pump chemo machines, the cancer drugs could be administered to the patients much more efficiently, but since the hospital’s budget didn’t allow them to make such an expensive purchase, they had to stick with the single pump machines.
The 62-year-old cancer patient is a father and a grandfather who is an active member of the community and loves to help people out. No wonder he started a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe so that he could buy more triple-pump chemotherapy machines for his hospital. Till now, he has found almost 10 second-hand machines on e-Bay, all of which cost under $1000.
