Policy and Politics News

In a recent talk at a J.P. Morgan-sponsored health care conference, DaVita Inc. CEO Kent Thiry said his company and others decided “with great reluctance” to sue the federal government earlier this month in an effort to stop a final rule governing third-party payments for insurance premiums for dialysis patients.

The federal government is spending a lot of money on kidney disease, but the bulk of it is going into treatments for kidney failure, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced on Jan. 18 that it had accepted 24 new End-Stage Renal Disease Seamless Care Organizations (ESCOs) into its five-year Comprehensive ESRD Care Demonstration––including applications from three medium-sized providers.

Patients who have chronic kidney disease but are not on dialysis have higher out-of-pocket health care than stroke and cancer patients, according to a study by researchers at Loyola University Chicago and Loyola Medicine.

A Texas judge on Jan. 12 approved a request by dialysis companies to delay a new regulation, issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and expected to take effect Jan. 13, that would have required them to disclose to health plans when premium assistance was being offered to patients who sign up for private health insurance.

The U.S. Department of Justice urged a federal judge in Texas on Wednesday not to grant the request from dialysis providers to halt an interim final rule issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that is set to go into effect Jan. 13, Law 360 reported Jan. 11.

The following is a statement from the The Renal Physicians Association President Rebecca Schmidt, DO in response to an interim final rule issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, regarding dialysis companies providing premium assistance for individual marketplace plans either directly, or through a third party. 

On Jan. 6, three dialysis providers and a patient organization filed a lawsuit seeking an emergency temporary restraining order against the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Interim Final Rule (IFR).

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston has subpoenaed DaVita Inc., Fresenius Medical Care, and the American Kidney Fund (AKF) related to the Health Insurance Premium Program operated by the AKF.

The surprising victory in the presidential race for billionaire Donald Trump and a majority vote in the U.S. House and the Senate has clearly put current health care policy on borrowed time. Can any of these changes coming down the road in 2017 impact the ESRD program? We asked Robert Blaser, Director of Public Policy for the Renal Physicians Association, and Donna Bednarski, RN, MSN, ANP-BC, CNN, who is the American Nephrology Nurses Association’s Kidney Care Partners consultant, to help us sort through the impact of the shift in power on Capitol Hill.