Some Dialysis Patients Give Medicare Failing Grade On Ambulance Trial

(By – Lisa Gillespie, Kaiser Health News)

Charles Prozzillo’s life changed for the worse when Medicare stopped paying for his ambulance rides to dialysis a year ago.

The 72-year-old Pennsylvania man, who had been a hairdresser with his own salon and volunteer firefighter in his younger days, was being treated for late stage of kidney failure. Three times a week for five years he had gone to a dialysis facility to have his blood cleansed of waste, a job his kidneys could no longer do. The sessions gave him crams and tired him, but they kept him alive.

He could still sit up and walk a few steps. He wasn’t bedridden. That’s why Medicare cut off his rides. Read more…

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Read more…

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