OPINION: Congressional action needed for NM's kidney disease patients

For those in New Mexico battling chronic kidney disease, a brand-new treatment facility in Albuquerque has become a beacon of hope.

In addition to providing essential treatment to kidney disease patients, doctors at the state-of-the-art facility are trying to better understand why New Mexicans disproportionately suffer from a specific type of kidney disease. It’s an important effort because New Mexico has some of the highest rates of end-stage renal disease (ESRD), or full kidney failure.

However, access to dialysis care — the time-consuming and exhausting treatment for those waiting to receive a kidney transplant — in New Mexico still lags behind.

This gap in care is especially troubling for Native Americans, who make up 12.4% of the state’s population and experience ESRD at nearly twice the rate of white Americans. The new treatment facility in Albuquerque should help us understand why these disparities exist, but the inequities and challenges facing New Mexicans with kidney failure go even further.

In addition to experiencing kidney failure at disproportionate rates, many Native Americans and New Mexicans with the disease are being denied the health coverage and benefits they need to survive and live fulfilling lives. Currently, private insurance companies can effectively kick ESRD patients off their health insurance plans, an increasingly prevalent phenomenon following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed insurers to drastically weaken dialysis coverage for new patients.

Previously, ESRD patients could keep their health coverage for 30 months before enrolling in Medicare. Now, insurers can push those patients off their plans almost immediately, throwing them into financial and medical turmoil.

Since New Mexicans, and particularly Native Americans, experience kidney failure at higher rates than others, they also experience the unjust consequences of the Supreme Court’s ruling more than others.

Those consequences play out in a number of ways that have very real effects on patients’ lives. Private insurance in New Mexico goes a lot farther than Medicare and Medicaid; it pays out a lot more for medications and treatment, which is why new dialysis patients with private insurance enjoy top-of-the-line medications and a wider choice of doctors.

Private insurance is especially important for Native Americans since the Indian Health Service is consistently underfunded, and many Native Americans have to travel long distances to receive high-quality care. They should have the opportunity to maintain the benefits of private insurance, but they are often denied those benefits.

The 30-month buffer period also provided new dialysis patients with much-needed coverage at a vulnerable time, allowing them to figure out how to eventually pay for the 20% that Medicare doesn’t cover.

Many rely on private insurance to cover it, but if patients are forced to drop their plans, then they could be left financially stranded without any option but to pay out of pocket and incur medical debt.

For Native Americans who already suffer from higher rates of medical debt, dialysis patients in New Mexico could be made even more vulnerable without decisive legislative action.

Fortunately, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, has stepped up to provide some justice for New Mexicans with kidney disease.

Sen. Heinrich and a bipartisan group of senators recently introduced H.R. 6860 — Restore Protections for Dialysis Patients Act, which would restore the 30-month window when patients could keep their private insurance and all of the benefits they need. They wouldn’t be pushed off their plans and forced to fend for themselves, and they would have the protections they deserve.

Heinrich’s bipartisan bill is the kind of effort we need to provide justice for New Mexicans and Native Americans who disproportionately suffer from kidney disease. By protecting new dialysis patients’ private insurance for the first 30 months of care, New Mexico’s most vulnerable, including Native American communities, can rest assured that their health insurance will be there for them when they need it.

It’s up to all of us to look out for each other and address injustice where we see it. The new kidney failure treatment facility in Albuquerque is doing its part by trying to understand why disparities in kidney disease exist. And Heinrich is doing his part by leading this bipartisan legislation to protect patients’ health coverage.

Dr. Barbara L. McAneny is the former president of the American Medical Association and a board-certified medical oncologist and hematologist from Albuquerque.