Update: And it gets worse: KIDS!!!!
Petition (and see our visit to DC and DC Press Conference + Rally)
Since Warren Buffett (major stockholder in DaVita) so far refuses to wave his magic money wand to fix the the problems in kidney dialysis - even after a trip to Omaha last month - and even after being whaled on by the ghost of Charlie Munger. (Ok, I may have made up that last part) This writer has gone back to doing things like handing out flyers at the Auraria campus here in Denver. And also writing my federal reps, they tend to wander off if not nudged often enough. Having watched my state legislators at work I do notice legislators bounce around like ping pong balls. So I'm putting out the following examples of what could be written to your legislators. The first is a simple example of what anybody could write, the 2nd is what I recently wrote:
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"There are a lot of reasons DaVita (the huge kidney dialysis company) should be broken up (the numbers, scandals), are there any reasons left indicating DaVita SHOULDN'T be broken up into something like small care co-ops?" (text example that can be copied and pasted into a contact webpage)
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Recent email:
Rep. (Jason) Crow,
Besides having not even kids being spared in kidney dialysis, I thought I ought to mention another God-awful problem that has been around for decades: dialysis patient terminations. I came close to almost seeing this firsthand years ago when my daughter was in a clinic and I made the mistake of asking too many questions - and not liking the answers. The charge nurse threatened to kick my daughter out of the clinic, though she and the doctor relented later.
The article I linked to had this to say about terminations:
"This profit motive makes involuntary discharge a very American problem. In countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the vast majority of clinics must accept everyone. Involuntary discharge “would not be tolerated in the Canadian health care system,” Bear says. “There would be outrage beyond description.”"
And:
"In his nephrology practice in Alberta, Bear saw plenty of patients prone to outbursts and disruptive behavior. What he didn’t see over his four-decade career, he told me, was a single involuntary discharge. He attributes this to lower patient-to-staff ratios. The bulk of care in Canadian dialysis clinics is performed by highly paid and well-trained nurses, Bear says. Technicians are responsible for maintaining the machines, not attending patients. This, and the absence of profiteering, he says, has rendered involuntary discharge nearly nonexistent." (all of this for higher costs here in the US of course)
Journalist Carrie Arnold wrote much of the article I quoted, she and others were also responsible for a series of articles put out by Scientific American and Undark.
So what are the solutions? They are mentioned in the 2nd half of the article I'm linking to. The first half of the article summarizes the press conference NYT's best-selling author Tom Mueller had with the labor union SEIU with DC earlier in the year, Tom Mueller has the book 'How to Make a Killing' out. A book we left with your staff in DC on February 29th. A book we hope you and your staff had time to look over!
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P.S. There is audio and video of the May 2024 Kidney Dialysis Walk in Omaha, but coming from the age of smoke signals and the pony express it is taking time to put together.
