NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Trump administration plans to change the way it pays for kidney disease treatments to favor lower cost care at home and transplants over the current standard, dialysis clinics, top health officials said on Wednesday during a press briefing.
The U.S. government spends $114 billion each year to treat chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease.
The announcement of the proposed changes, which require new policies from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, coincides with U.S. President Donald Trump signing an executive order on Wednesday to improve kidney treatment.
Nearly 15% of the U.S. adult population was suffering from chronic kidney disease in 2018, fueled by growing rates of diabetes and hypertension, according to the government’s U.S. Renal Data System.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters that the government aimed to reduce the number of Americans developing end-stage renal disease by 25% by 2030, to have 80% of new patients receiving dialysis in home or transplants by 2025 and to double the number of kidneys available for transplant by 2030.
The U.S. kidney care market is dominated by two players: DaVita Inc and Fresenius Medical Care AG, which operate more than 5,000 U.S. dialysis clinics and control around 70% of the market.
DaVita shares were up 2.6% to $53.93 in New York morning trading while Fresenius Medical was up 1.53% at 76.66 euros in Frankfurt trading.
Trump’s wife, Melania, was hospitalized for several days in May 2018 after an embolization procedure to treat a benign kidney condition.
Reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Susan Thomas
