Prop 8: Dialysis Treatment Regulations
Props in a Minute: Prop 8 - Dialysis Clinics
This proposition did not pass.
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What? | |
| Puts regulations on treatment at dialysis centers. | |
Why? | |
The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers hopes to pass legislation to change the standard of dialysis clinics. | |
Vote Yes
| Vote No
|
| Supports requiring dialysis clinics to issue refunds for revenue above 115 percent of the costs of direct patient care and healthcare improvements. | Opposes requiring dialysis clinics to issue refunds for revenue above 115 percent of the costs of direct patient care and healthcare improvements. |
This union-backed initiative contends that big corporations are making windfall profits providing dialysis, and more regulation will save millions of dollars for private insurers and taxpayer-backed government health insurance programs. But patient advocates worry that treatment will suffer instead.
An industry-sponsored group, Patients and Caregivers to Protect Dialysis Patients, raised more than $17 million by the end of March to oppose Prop 8. It assembled a broad coalition of backers including associations representing doctors, hospitals, businesses, seniors, veterans and kidney patients, who fear more regulation will have dangerous unintended consequences.
Supporters say Prop 8 provides a financial incentive for dialysis centers to spend more on direct patient care. Opponents say Prop 8 defines patient care services too narrowly because it is actually part of a multistate, multiyear effort to unionize dialysis clinic workers and force clinics to accept contract demands. The Prop 8 campaign was initially funded almost solely with $6 million from the United Healthcare Workers West union.
Both sides agree that timely access to dialysis saves lives and that a shortage of treatment centers drives up costs. Opponents say Prop 8 will cause dialysis clinics to shut down, sending patients to more expensive and already crowded hospital emergency rooms. That migration could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in higher costs for Medi-Cal and Medicare to treat dialysis patients. But Prop 8 supporters say dialysis patient care is already in crisis, with insurers overpaying and vulnerable patients relegated to unsanitary clinics with outdated equipment in run-down strip malls.
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Data from Cal Access as of 10/30/18.
