Kidney patients to perform kidney dialysis themselves because of ObamaCare

from theblogprof by The blogprof


Kidney patients to perform kidney dialysis themselves because of ObamaCare: "Remember that Edward Jones commercial where a doctor is talking on the phone to his patient? The doctor instructs his nervous patient how to operate on himself from his kitchen with a steak knife. Holding the knife in one hand, the trembling man asks, 'Shouldn't you be doing this?' Well, that's what it's going to be like. The essence of the EJ commercial was put to paper:

It is, however, not that big of a stretch. Because of rationing due to the higher cost that ObamaCare is leading to, kidney dialysis patients will have to do their own dialysis at their home. From the AP via The Oakland Press: New rules may increase patients on home dialysis. The state-run Obama AP of course, paints this as a convenience:

Rodney Sokoloski used to get up before dawn three times a week and drive two hours from his high desert home to the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance to get hooked up to a dialysis machine.

The blood-cleansing treatment was time-consuming and often left him feeling drained even before his workday began.

Not anymore. After four months of shuttling back-and-forth, the 61-year-old last year switched to doing dialysis at home every night while he sleeps. He starts it after dinner, wheeling the dialysis machine — the size of a carry-on suitcase — into the living room where he can watch TV or chat with his wife.

For dialysis, you have to insert a needle in two places in your body. Is Sokoloski qualified for that? Does the machine come with an instruction booklet? Online doctor support? And just what happens when something goes wrong while he's sleeping? This isn't a blood glucose meter. This is hooking yourself up to a machine that will pull every drop of blood out of your body and put it back in. It's not until later in the article that you can see why the drive for home-based dialysis is occurring at all:

New Medicare payment rules that just went into effect could change that. The changes give dialysis clinics more motivation to control costs and raise the amount centers get to teach do-it-yourself dialysis.

Do-it-yourself-dialysis. In the future, you may very well be sitting at that dining room table with the steak knife and a doctor (maybe) on the line instructing you where to make that first incision. Either that or you go see one of those black market docs in a motel room:

Even though the AP paints a rosy picture of convenience, what happens when in-home dialysis is required of people? Are those the proverbial eggs that must be broken for the ObamaCare omelet?


UPDATE: For the life of me I cannot find that Edward Jones commercial. Plenty other I did, like these:

Anyone know where I can find the one at the top of this post?

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