Marc Perrusquia at the Memphis Commercial Appeal has a big story on the complicated business of getting a liver transplant

It's behind a paywall, but it's a really good story, and worth the $5 if you're even moderately interested in learning more about healthcare, and how people in the U.S. deal with trying to get a liver transplant.


The story has new details about the relationship between Steve Jobs and Dr. James Eason, the doctor that performed Steve Jobs' liver transplant, which is how we heard about it When Jobs got his surgery in Memphis, he bought a house near the hospital. At the time, the housing market was crashing, so Jobs paid $850,000 for a home that sold for $1.3 million just a few years earlier.

Jobs' lawyer, George Riley, bought the house through a shell company to prevent anyone from discovering Jobs was moving to Memphis temporarily.


After Jobs left the house, Eason moved in. He lived in the house from 2009 to 2011, before buying the house from Riley.

For the two years Eason lived in the house, Jobs' lawyer paid for property taxes ($23,585 in total) and utilities ($8,770 in total). In 2011, Eason bought the house for $850,000, the price Jobs' paid three years earlier.

Jobs transplant was already controversial because he was an out-of-towner who got a liver transplant via a system called multiple listing . Wealthy patients can get themselves on more than one list for organ transplants. It's completely legal, but it feels unfair to poorer patients.


The behavior of Eason has been criticized for a while, and this latest revelation will only add to that.

Eason visited Jobs to do a pre-transplant check up. Normally, the patient comes to the doctor. Eason also made house calls to Jobs and bought him drinks at stores when Jobs was in Memphis.

Further, Jobs only lived 2.5 years after his liver transplant, and Perrusquia says 70% of liver transplants live for 5 years. He questions whether Jobs should have even gotten the transplant.

In response to questions about the surgery, Eason has said in the past,

"Following the transplant, he came out with the iPad, and the new iPhone and presented the Cloud ... No telling what else is still in the works that he thought of after that time."


As for the questions about the house, Eason says he became good friends with Riley. He was going through a divorce and needed a place to stay. Riley needed someone to watch the house, and so this was a mutually beneficial arrangement, not some shady deal to take care of Eason for tending to Jobs.