To the Editor
In November 2022, I walked into urgent care with a blood pressure of 263 over 120. I walked out with a life-changing diagnosis, kidney failure. I was a single
mother with an 8-year-old daughter, and overnight, my entire world shifted. I had to quit my job and start dialysis immediately, something I never saw coming.
When I was first diagnosed, I had private insurance through my employer before eventually transitioning to Medicare. That private coverage gave me the stability I needed during that period of my life. Nearly four years later, I am still on dialysis and still fighting to get back on the transplant list.
A recent Supreme Court ruling now allows insurers to push dialysis patients off their private insurance before the traditional 30-month protection period ends. The Restore Protections for Dialysis Patients Act would restore that safeguard, and I urge Rep. Matt Van Epps and Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty to support it.
Dialysis patients are already navigating one of the hardest battles of their lives, managing treatments, fighting for transplants, and holding their families together. Stripping away private insurance coverage prematurely only makes an impossible situation worse. That 30-month buffer exists for a reason, and Congress has the power to restore it. Patients cannot afford to wait.
Leslie Grundy, Franklin, Tennessee
