I have been on hemodialysis for four years. My grandmother was also on dialysis. I started just a year or two after she did. So when I say kidney disease runs in my
family, I mean it in the most personal way possible.
Dialysis is exhausting. You sit for four to five hours at a time, sometimes dealing with staff who aren’t always sensitive to what patients are going through. I am also managing more than just kidney failure. I am a below-the-knee amputee facing a second amputation, and that exhaustion becomes almost unbearable. I started on employer-sponsored private insurance before eventually transitioning to Medicare. That private coverage mattered.
That’s why a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing insurers to push dialysis patients off private coverage before the traditional 30-month buffer period ends worries me so much. New dialysis patients are already navigating one of the hardest times of their lives. Losing stable private insurance too soon adds a completely new element on top of a medical crisis.
The Restore Protections for Dialysis Patients Act would restore that 30-month safeguard. I’m urging Rep. Ralph Norman and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott to support this bipartisan bill and protect dialysis patients like me.
Channelle Jones , Camden, Massachusetts
