Lawmakers, Advocates Push To Extend Medicare's Coverage Of Kidney Transplant Drugs

On Wednesday, Alexis Conell will mark seven years since she received the kidney transplant that saved her life, but the 53-year-old Chicago woman isn't exactly celebrating.
Although the federal government paid most of the costs for her 2012 transplant, a long-standing Medicare policy halted coverage three years later for the drugs that keep her body from rejecting the organ. So when Conell lost her job suddenly last September, she also lost her health insurance — and her ability to afford the 16 daily medications she needs to survive.
"I was terrified," she says. "All you're thinking is, 'I don't want to lose my kidney.'"
For nearly a half-century, Medicare has covered patients, regardless of age, who have end-stage renal disease, including paying the costs of kidney transplants and related care, which run about $100,000 per patient. But coverage ends after 36 months for those younger than 65 who don't otherwise qualify for the program — and that includes payment for the vital immunosuppressive drugs that cost thousands per patient each month. Last week's announcement of the Trump administration's overhaul of kidney care in the U.S. has reanimated an effort by a group of federal lawmakers and kidney care advocates to extend drug coverage.--> READ MORE