“Patients are not hot potatoes”: How the fight over dialysis coverage is putting kidney failure patients at risk
As soon as she heard the Supreme Court decision, LaVarne Burton began to worry. As CEO of the nonprofit American Kidney Fund, she knew that the court’s ruling on Marietta v. DaVita last June — which allows employer-sponsored health insurance plans to limit outpatient dialysis coverage — was going to put the health of kidney failure patients at risk.
A disproportionate number of people with kidney failure are low-income and from historically marginalized communities, making them unable to absorb even small increases in health care costs. Within hours, Burton received reports from people on dialysis saying that they were concerned they would be hit with massive bills, and that they would need to reduce their number of weekly sessions or stop dialysis completely if switching to Medicare wasn’t an option.
