As Prop. 29 vote looms, dialysis patients brace for change
By JESSICA A. MEARNS
A woman dialysis patient waits in line for food in the lobby of a downtown Dallas hospital earlier this month. This year, with Prop. 29 on the ballot, her wait may stretch into minutes, if not hours.
Photographer: Chris Walker/Bloomberg News
October 9, 2016
MANCHESTER, N.H. — One of the first questions most of these patients ask is: who will pay for their care?
“All these people who are getting sick and dying are the ones who put up with it and keep making payments,” said one man who said he had been dialysis-bound for years. “They’re the ones who are making the payments.”
Others are more blunt: dialysis patients are getting sicker every year; dialysis patients need to be cared for; no one wants the costs of Medicare and Medicaid to get even higher.
If the state doesn’t pass Prop. 29, dialysis patients in New Hampshire and other places with similar government-run programs that fund and coordinate care for dialysis patients — such as those in Oregon, Washington state and New Jersey — will have to choose between the state paying the bills or staying on dialysis for as long as possible.
The question is at the heart of the ongoing legal brawl between the U.S. Senate and state attorneys general about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and health-care insurance. But it also reflects the growing reality that many dialysis patients won’t receive the care they need.
“It’s all about the money,” said Michael S. Risman, co-chairman of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and a pediatric nephrologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
The question of how to pay for dialysis and other medical services is a complicated