Petition (and see our visit to DC and DC Press Conference + Rally)
A link to this blog has been sent to FTC Chairperson Lina Khan as part of an email. Feel free to do the same! Or of course come up with your own message! Email:
!!!P.S. The following History and recent Children's stats linked to, need to be emphasized!!! Update: And it gets worse: KIDS!!!!
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Chairperson Lina Khan,
I've been an admirer of your antitrust work, but thought I should let you know there is some low-hanging fruit I should make you aware of. That low-hanging fruit would be kidney dialysis. I'm the father of a daughter dealing with kidney disease (transplant now) and I've been a kidney dialysis advocate for over twenty years. One highlight has been helping head-up a group that got a bill through the Colorado Statehouse for the certification of kidney dialysis technicians. (passed in 2007, renewed in 2012 and 2019)
The duopoly of DaVita and Fresenius control about 80% of the free-standing dialysis units in the US. Their for-profit ways have resulted in numbers that can only be described as horrific! And to top it off the per capita costs of dialysis in the US have been quoted as being "the highest in the industrialized world (about $35 billion per year)"!1 Throw in all the scandals that have plagued this field of medicine over the years and I think it would be safe to say there isn't a much better candidate for being busted into pieces! They have gotten away with this for years by staying under the radar with buying up small clinics with values too tiny to set off alarm bells. But then take all these little monopolies (clinics) and combine them into two near-monopolies - you now can see the results!
I'll let you know there are organizations such as M.I. Mother's Keeper out of D.C. and Dialysis Advocates being motivated to move on this by a book that just recently came out: 'How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death, and Dollars' by NYT's best-selling author Tom Mueller. This book is a log that has thrown on a fire that has been burning for decades! Add in the fine media pieces that have been done over the years and I'm seeing no better time for this to come to the forefront!
Also I see you take complaints about business conduct that harms competition, limits products or services, destroys innovation, or raises prices. You might add to that list conduct that kills people!
Regards,
[name]
DialysisEthics2.org
P.S. Numbers can have a habit of putting some people to sleep, here are some that could cause insomnia (and nightmares):
Since 1991:
children age 10–19, mortality due to infection – up 19%
(children age 10–19, cardiovascular mortality – up 62%)
2006 ADR pg. 1602
