More than 70 stakeholders from the kidney community and beyond alert Congress that dialysis patients will lose access to critical medicine beginning January 1, 2025.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 19, 2024) – The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to meet Wednesday to markup the Kidney Patient Access Technologically Innovative and Essential Nephrology Treatments Act of 2023 or the ‘‘Kidney PATIENT Act” (H.R. 5074).
H.R. 5074 has made significant progress in recent weeks. More than 70 stakeholders from patient advocacy groups, racial equity organizations, labor unions, and faith leadership wrote to Congress urging them to preserve patient access to oral-only Phosphate Lowering Therapies (PLTs) by keeping them out of the End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) payment bundle.
On March 6, 2024, after amending the original bill language to include a two-year delay and require a study, House Ways & Means Committee members overwhelmingly voted, 41-1, to favorably report the legislation to the U.S. House of Representatives. Less than a week later, the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Health voted 16 -10 to report the full 10-year delay favorably.