Medicaid cuts threaten life-saving treatments and practices

It’s a time-consuming and tedious, yet necessary, process. When for a variety of reasons the kidneys stop functioning properly, dialysis is the procedure that keeps many alive. As an outpatient procedure, dialysis has been around since the 1960s. It usually requires an individual to go three times per week to an outpatient facility and sit for about three hours connected to an ATM-looking machine that does what a person’s body can no longer do: remove waste products and toxins, along with excess fluids, from the bloodstream. For those with chronic kidney issues, it’s a life-saving treatment.

For Medicaid patients in Alabama who receive dialysis, their thrice weekly trip to an outpatient center will soon be replaced with trips to the emergency room to undergo the treatments. Doing so will, on average, triple the cost of the procedure, adding a huge financial burden for hospitals that will have to absorb the costs of treating patients who won’t be able to pay them back. The low-income patients themselves will now have their lives hanging in the balance if they don’t receive treatment.