Knock LA

Unless you’re currently in chronic renal failure, you probably haven’t given a second (or first) thought to the dialysis industry. But for people experiencing kidney failure, dialysis is basically a part-time job. Two or three times per week, for several hours each session, they sit in a storefront-type outpatient facility with a uniquely-hideous smell and have their blood pumped out of them, filtered, and pumped back in.

Proposition 8 will limit the amount dialysis clinics can charge patients for treatment. The cap will be set at 115% of the costs for direct patient care and quality improvement (training, patient education, equipment, and so on).

For those doing the math, that’s a built-in 15% profit margin. So don’t worry, the industry will be just fine. And for reference, without insurance dialysis costs around $72,000 per year.

And while this isn’t the Medicare-For-All style, free healthcare service that we very much hope to see in the near future, Prop 8 will put a stop to the price-gouging of patients who will literally die without regular, ongoing dialysis treatment.

So tell the healthcare industry as a whole that we’re coming for their profits. They can no longer hold our lives hostage with extortion-level prices, in any sector of the medical field. Vote YES on Prop 8.