As mental health advocates in the Nation's Capital, the Healthy DC & Me Leadership Coalition provides outreach in communities that are disproportionately affected by the current state of erroneous practices prevalent in the dialysis industry. Many community members are underserved, targeted, and sadly, dying due to America's inadequate systemic healthcare responses and outcomes. Our organization witnesses daily the contributory social determinants, and systemic failures that are plaguing families and individuals who are living with chronic kidney disease amidst dangerously accepted dialysis industry practices.  The diminished levels of mental health, and American citizens' trust for receiving properly mandated healthcare that includes appropriate federal government oversight and accountability, must be restored. This is a national issue that demands immediate legislative, bi-partisan attention. 

American citizens plagued with chronic kidney disease are seeking accountable law-making officials with righteous passion and energy for fixing our badly broken sector of dialysis, which is one of the worst examples of race bias in US healthcare, negatively affecting citizens from various identifying ethnic populations, as well as Caucasians.

The dialysis industry needs comprehensive reform. Current practices often prioritize profits over patients' well-being, leading to substandard care for those who need it most. According to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine (2019), mortality rates among dialysis patients are alarmingly high - approximately twice as much as in other developed countries.

Furthermore, there is an urgent need for proper Congressional and Medicare oversight of this industry. The lack of appropriate stringent regulations allows for continued exploitation and neglect of vulnerable patient populations.

We must demand better from our healthcare system; we must insist on reforms that put patients first rather than profits. We call upon Congress and Medicare to take immediate action – implement necessary reforms in the dialysis industry and establish robust oversight mechanisms to ensure quality care for all patients.

In 1986, and again in 2000, dialysis advocates, medical professionals, and citizens with chronic kidney failure along with supporters for dialysis industry reform, traveled to Washington, DC to attend Senate hearings on Capitol Hill to request needed industry reforms, as well as to report questionable and fraudulent practices of "Big Dialysis" corporations, such as Fresenius, and DaVita.  Despite workers of dialysis, nephrologists, and patient testimonials of wrongdoing that continue to detail greedy profiteering business models, American citizens of dialysis continue to perish under the veil of billion-dollar healthcare contract awards.

Many underserved minority communities continue to be held hostage to "unscrupulous" healthcare practices by corporations whose amassed wealth continues to grow, as more American citizens are forced into dialysis processes with limited, or no access to kidney transplant, or home modality education. 

• Why have America's lawmakers not put an end to "conflict of interest" nephrologists' Stark Law exemptions?
• Why has Medicare oversight failed to effectively lower corporate profits made from dialysis?
• Why has the National Kidney Foundation recommended the immediate removal of the eGFR algorithm race modifier, which is one of the primary diagnostic methods for detecting and managing kidney diseases, from the algorithm in all laboratories in the U.S, as of 2021, yet lawmakers, and senior Medicare officials continue to fail systemically to protect the disproportionate rate of underserved populations who continue to be diagnosed and "pushed" into "cash cow" "Big Dialysis" corporate machines and death traps?
• Why is there not enough spending on preventative or early detection of chronic kidney disease?

Please sign this petition if you believe that every American citizen deserves access to quality healthcare services regardless of their socio-economic status or geographical location. Your signature can help bring about much-needed change in the dialysis industry.

The Healthy DC & Me Leadership Coalition is demanding immediate dialysis industry reform that will include federal government mandated community-based organizational oversights with allocated funding for accountable research, mandatory transplant education, "patient centered" external advocacy, mental health & trauma outreach, in addition to cure-based funding priorities, increased home modality access, and equitable healthcare solutions. 

This is a national call for Big Dialysis corporations to be dismantled, and for community-based healthcare oversight models to be funded, mandated, and piloted for implementation across the nation.  This is a national call to end the disproportionate deaths of Americans that have fallen prey to the current failing practices within the dialysis industry.

Please join us in our demands! Congress, it is time for you to undo "Big Dialysis"!  Restore the power of sound healthcare, life-saving practices and healthy outcomes for all American citizens!

Please sign this petition today and help us to amplify American voices all over this great nation! Thank you. 

Rest In Power Vanessa Winters and Pastor Steven L. Turner, two dialysis citizens of color, who recently lost their lives while caught in America’s dialysis trap.  May this fight be empowered by their wisdom, courage and sacrifice.  

For more information visit: https://www.mitv.fyi

#mentalhealthmatters! #allAmericansmatter!