New Medicaid rules in the Trump administration budget bill are making it much harder for dialysis patients to get the care they need to stay alive.
A clinic in Chadron, Nebraska, was forced to stop offering dialysis, meaning some people have to drive hundreds of miles to get care.
Karol Franks, who has a long family history of kidney disease, said receiving regular dialysis treatments is hard enough for people who are otherwise healthy and mobile. But reporting by the American Independent showed new Medicaid eligibility requirements in the Trump administration budget bill make qualifying for dialysis and actually receiving it much harder and more expensive.
"Can you imagine if you have low income, you have a family to take care of, what if you're faced with having to deal with doing volunteer work to qualify for Medicaid?" Franks asked. "I don't know who wrote that thing."
The Trump administration has said by rewriting Medicaid eligibility guidelines, it is trying to reduce financial waste and fraud. The cuts have also reduced access to other social services, including food and nutrition programs.
For kidney patients above the federal poverty line, the new Medicaid provisions add a $35 co-pay for each treatment, which adds up to $5,000 a year if a patient gets dialysis even three times a week. But despite the hardships dialysis patients are facing, Franks is not opposed to work requirements laid out in the new Medicaid provisions.
"I'm OK with that because they're on Medicaid just because they need some sort of health insurance, and they don't have the income to pay for it," Franks explained. "But for people on dialysis, I think it's a challenge."
Dialysis works by filtering out toxins in a patient's blood, a function their kidneys would typically handle. The Mayo Clinic said the procedure can leave a patient feeling fatigued.