What the What!? Kidneys be Krazy

So, of course, now the kidney community is fighting over how to pay for extending Medicare coverage from 36 months to forever for kidney transplant patients. Just a reminder, as stated in the NY Times article, our drugs without coverage run from $1000 - $3000 a month and many people lose their transplants when faced with covering those costs by themselves.

The basic gist is that dialysis supporters believe the provisions in the bill undercut the provisions that protect and cover dialysis patients. Of course, the flip side is that transplant patients right now don't have nearly the coverage or support that dialysis patients get. Also, many detractors are people who are funded by dialysis corporations and lobbies, and, of course, they would not want to make their machines or centers any cheaper or more efficient, so naturally they would detract from anything that asks them to change their ways (possibly one of many reasons why the safer, more effective at-home dialysis is so sparsely given as treatment right now).

What do I think? I think that while the payment method may not be as beneficial as the alternate proposed method (extending the wait time for kidney patients to enroll in Medicare who also have private insurance), it is much better than the amendment not getting into the bill at all. The fact of the matter is, is that this amendment will save money (upwards of $100 million dollars over the next decade) and, more importantly, save lives. There's absolutely no reason not to pass it.

Meanwhile, let's all keep in mind that people who get cancer, heart disease, and other potentially deadly illness don't get Medicare coverage whatsoever, so we, as transplant recipients, should feel lucky that we get what we do. More importantly, we should recognize that all of these disease sufferers should get the same beneficial treatment that we do, which is exactly what Congress had planned when they (Republicans and Democrats) passed the bill for our coverage back in the 70s. Just something to think about.