Arizona Kidney Patients Deserve Innovative Cures
This article was originally featured in Arizona Capitol Times. Written by Javier Palomarez
America spends more than $130 billion a year — over one-quarter of the entire Medicare budget — on kidney disease. And yet, when it comes to actually saving lives, we lag behind 24 other countries, including France, Saudi Arabia, and even Iran.
That’s not just a failure of policy — it’s a moral and economic failure. And it’s one our communities know all too well.
Here in Arizona, an estimated 16,300 are living with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), and Hispanic patients — especially women — are among the hardest hit. Our abuelas are the heart and soul of our families. They’re more likely to progress to kidney failure, but less likely to receive a transplant. For us, access to the most effective treatment isn’t a luxury — it’s a lifeline for our communities.
The U.S. kidney care system is failing the very people it’s meant to serve. Today, more than 60% of Americans on dialysis die within five years. In Arizona, over 7,000 Medicare patients rely on dialysis. Yet Big Healthcare continues to trap patients in a costly, for-profit cycle — while prevention, innovation and access to transplants remain neglected.
Instead of fixing this broken model, Washington made it worse. Just before President Trump took office, career bureaucrats at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) quietly changed the rules — moving these medications into a government “bundle” that puts dialysis corporations in charge, instead of patients, doctors, or pharmacists.
As a result, patients can no longer get these medications filled at their local pharmacy. They must rely on dialysis clinics to decide whether or not they receive them. PLTs help patients control phosphorus levels in their blood, which is required to stay eligible for a transplant. Without access to them, patients suffer more complications, are hospitalized more often, and may be removed from transplant lists entirely.
Transplants save lives and taxpayer dollars. Every kidney transplant saves Medicare more than $65,000 per year — that’s $500,000 over a decade compared to keeping patients on dialysis. So why would CMS undermine access to the very therapies that help patients get transplants?
This rule squeezes out smaller providers and sidelines the Made-in-America biotech companies that are working to deliver next-generation treatments. Our members — many of them small manufacturers, family-run startups, and innovators — are investing millions into building better therapies. However, there’s no incentive to innovate when the system is rigged to reward the status quo.
This isn’t what leadership looks like. And our community — our patients, our workers, our small businesses — deserve better. Rural Americans living in states like Arizona are more likely to be diagnosed with kidney disease, and essential sectors like agriculture, trucking and construction report high rates of kidney failure.
This can still be fixed. CMS has proposed its 2026 rule, and once again, it fails to restore Part D access for these essential medications outside the bundle. Now is the time to speak up.
A growing coalition — including the American Society of Nephrology, Nephrologists for Equitable Kidney Care, the National Minority Quality Forum, the American Association of Kidney Patients, and the National Grange — is demanding change. We join them in calling on CMS to reverse this harmful policy and restore competition, access and innovation to kidney care.
Restricting coverage for innovative medicines threatens the care patients need most. Now is the time to strongly urge the White House and Members of Congress to acknowledge the consequences of the proposed policy change and take quick and decisive actions to expand coverage and preserve access.
Javier Palomarez is President & CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council.