The other was a "tissue engineered" heart valve. They take a human donor valve, and over the course of a few weeks remove the human cells in some kind of soap bath, only the collagen matrix remains. This reduces rejection to basically zero, and allows the patient to live without immune suppressants for the rest of their lives.
Alternatives would be a regular human valve (+ immune suppressants indefinitely), animal valves (same problem) or artificial valve (typically don't last for longer than 10 years, and always has increased risk of persistent settlement with bacteria, so need to take antibiotics for every minor thing).
(sorry, medical English is really hard for me, hope this makes sense; if not, feel free to ask).
Healthcare is much more than being operated or receiving some treatment for a rare condition, both things that are very much researched and done outside the US both privately and with public money. Healthcare is also about allowing people with health problems to live with dignity and allow then to function in society. To care for the weak and not only to restore productivity of a broken cog. Healthcare is about a strong first line of care that prevent conditions to get worse and irreparable. Many countries with a thousand or less of US's GDP can teach a lesson or two on that. In any case, most countries are slowly copying many aspects of US healthcare, I guess it must be indeed be better, or perhaps more profitable.
US is also able to attract the best professionals, including MDs. Here in Canada we're left with the "leftovers". Those that did not make it big in life.
the US just uses ERs as an infinitely shittier but equally costly version.
You can't even shop around for a family doctor. You have to sell them accepting you as a patient. With that power inbalance you better follow what they suggest and avoid questioning too much or you won't have a doctor.
With HMO's, you're guaranteed someone will be assigned to you. With traditional insurance, there's a big labor shortage, and there are often <= 1 doctors accepting patients in some towns.
In the USA you literally shop around. They advertise. You can literally look for the best surgeon and ask around.
This goes for doctors, drugs, surgeries, devices.
If you want good results, you really have to take matters into your own hands, search for possible treatments yourself, evaluate several doctors until you find a competent one, research possible adverse side effects yourself etc.
Example: somebody in my family had two different surgeries by non-standard methods that gave her significant advantages over the regular methods; one of them offered (to our knowledge) in only one hospital in Germany, the other in three. In both cases her regular doctors didn't know about these methods, and were really surprised to hear about them afterwards. In both cases, she learned about these methods through some non-medical channel (a relative read about it in a newspaper, stuff like that).
If you just go to the next specialist for the field you need, chances are you don't get the optimal treatment, and the rarer the disease, the less like you get a good treatment.