The California Dialysis Initiative is up for vote in November. Its avowed purpose is to set arbitrary limits on what insurance companies pay dialysis clinics for actual patient care. The initiative sounds like it might be a protective device shielding patients from being overcharged. It isn't.
The dialysis clinics will be obliged to pay physicians and other providers less if they want to maintain current levels of corporate profit. At the same time, to keep administrative charges intact, the clinic administrations will be obliged to scramble their physicians and require them to see more patients per unit of time. It's called "efficiency."
The California Medical Association is opposed to the initiative because it poses potential harm to patients, but probably also because it poses financial hardship on large clinics and healthcare plans. For instance, healthcare contracts to provide care would have to be revisited and revised downwards. Current contracts would have to be renegotiated. Physicians, through no fault of their own, would be obliged to bear the brunt of reduced remuneration to keep the money flowing to the upper echelons of administration. That's how business is done in America, isn't it?
Once profitability is reversed recruitment of providers will drop. The trouble is that dialysis patients aren't in-and-out customers -- they often need lengthy visits, often more than occasionally -- so in the final analysis this initiative is against their best interests. That's why this initiative needs to go back to the drawing board.
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