For-profit dialysis firms typically maximize their income on the expense of their sufferers. John Oliver explores why a medical clinic is nothing like a Taco Bell.
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Oahu woman gives priceless Thanksgiving gift
An Oahu woman blessed another family with a priceless Thanksgiving gift. Doctor Maryellen Markley gave up a kidney to help...
please look at the tripulupa abomination. also, look at munch squad, it seems up John's alley
artificial kidneys for everyone.
This episode should be repeated yearly. It is an amazingly important topic.
The fact is Epogen does raise blood counts/Hematocrits which does reduce the need for transfusions (which have their own inherent risks) and lead to better cardiovascular health. I believe Davita was drawing several patient doses from the same vial, then billing for several vial accesses and thereby bilking Medicare. Unfortunately Davita has modeled their outpatient clinics on Taco Bell as mentioned here. When I first started working in dialysis we had about one RN for 3 patients with Technicians providing supervised supplemental care and patient monitoring. As the years went by reimbursement rates stayed the same so the for profit companies started diluting the RN numbers and replaced them with much lower paid technicians and the clinics became much more factory like. Wham bam thank you mam became the mantra, and it is true it became much more about the technicians than the patients welfare. As far as the survival rates of dialysis patients, if a patient has a pulse and has insurance, Davita and Fresenius wants that ESRD patient at its clinic, even if its just for 6 months of revenue. End Stage Renal Disease is increasing in our population due to the rapidly increasing numbers of diabetics in our population. So these corporations can project steady growth.
Americans, is Taco Bell really that bad? I'm thinking I'd want to do a food tour of America one day and I want to know which fast food places are unmissable.
The Davita guy is the Tiger King of dialysis.
A Davita At Home opened up in my home town right next to a fucking planet fitness
3:54, Canadians don't talk like this
are ppl so dumb dat they do not know abt transplant….oh god!!!
That’s a piss poor accent but I still love ya Johnny Oliver!
I’m glad I didn’t see this 2 years ago… because of Polycystic Kidney Disease I had to undergo dialysis treatments from mid-February up to April 18th, 2019, the day before I received a new kidney from a high school classmate. The only dialysis clinic in my small town is a DaVita operated one. I can second what the one staffer heard in the Kidney Smart class about transplants. Luckily, I have a good nephrologist (kidney doctor) that got me on the transplant list 2 years before I had to start dialysis. Now, I didn’t actually start treatments here in town because I wanted to stay under his care, but the trip was only 45 minutes each way. I would go visit my great aunt who lived nearby afterwards so I could rest for the return trip. That clinic is also run by DaVita, but I received much better care there than when I had to transfer to the closer one due to my health and financial issues. At the local clinic, there wasn’t much, if any, communication from the staff about how treatments were going to go or anything, and they messed up a nerve in my arm trying to get the needles into my fistula (surgically created blood vessel for dialysis). The last week was brutal, as it took 30 minutes to get started that Monday, then 45 minutes of struggling Wednesday morning, going back at 1 just to almost pass out when the nurse hit the nerve AGAIN, then finally (and slowly) got a partial treatment in the day before my surgery. Now, they were fairly nice to me, but at the same time they didn’t make me feel comfortable. Sorry for the long comment, I just haven’t been able to vent much, outside of to my family. I guess the long-winded point I was trying to make is that I would have been even more freaked out if I had seen this before starting treatments, and may have refused them and died before I could get the transplant.
23:16 For a sec, I thought he said “A million daughters”
BTW it's not that easy to get a transplant or to keep it working.
I worked at as a dialysis nurse and loved my job. That's until DaVita bought our center. It is true. They only care about profits not patients.
Omg…I'm on dyalisis and I attend Davita ,
I'll take "things that never happened" for a thousand please Alex.
us public healthcare is libertarian hellscape
In that one piece John Oliver made about Medicare, there was a woman who had to choose between heart medication and insulin because of lack of money. She chose heart medication because she though it was more acute to her health. It's nice to know that when she loses her kidneys due untreated diabetes, she gets free dialysis… But somehow I feel like it still would be cheaper to pay for her insulin than her 4 times a week dialysis. Also she will lose her working condition after diabetes takes her eyesight and legs… I wonder who is gonna have to pay for her services after that.
I worked in a DaVita business office for several years and I am sure I would have been treated better if working at a Taco Bell. I can only imagine how poorly the facility teammates are treated.
If you end up needing dialysis, ALWAYS make sure you're in network and avoid DaVita at all costs. They have no system to ensure you don't end up out of network and they will bill the hell out of your insurance. They are pushing for more patients to get peritoneal dialysis because those treatments are more expensive and I fear they will force people to treat at home who are not healthy enough.
My dad was on dialysis (not with DaVita) and luckily was able to get a transplant. He's had it for 15 years and is going strong. ALWAYS TAKE THE TRANSPLANT.
The "village culture" is used as a distraction to help justify poor raises and shitty benefits. Mix that in with the Nazis they recruit for their management teams and it becomes a horrible place to work. DaVita treats their employees (anyone who isn't a manager or higher) poorly and that ends up hurting the patients.
I know this is an old video, but I would love to see John Oliver talk about the bioartificial kidney and The Kidney Project by the UCSF, which has the possibility of eliminating the need of dialysis as a life sustaining treatment. And subsequently eliminate the need for huge dialysis companies…
21:29 That guy cheering made me laugh out loud. Not the usual sharp exhale through my nouse when something amusing happens, but actually laugh.
John I am Canadian and you don't have the good Canadian accent… But it still funny 😂😂😂😂
I checked the comments hoping someone would say
"Fun Fact: Taco Bell actually ran that ad".
Man in the Iron Mask is my fave movie!!! So pumped they mentioned it 😀
For all the anti-taco bell commercials john oliver and steven colbert do, they still do well! 2032 all restaurants will be Taco Bells!
I was a dialysis nurse for over 15 years
hahaha 2:04–2:19 totally inspired by this: https://www.youtube.com/embed/bagCdMUuevQ?start=20&end=40
You did not mention the following: There are 2 kinds of dialysis. Peritoneal dialysis is less confining , keeps lab values better , has a less restrictive than hemodialysis. Worst possibilities are peritenitis, sudden drop in B.P
& an 80% chance of inoperable hernia. This is a much shorter list than hemodialysis.
You can be taught how to do either dialysis yourself.
Under 15% of dialysis patients
get a transplant. But I know of a woman the same transplant for 40 years.
https://twitter.com/dwmoskowitz
I had no idea things were this bad personally I always thought of dialysis as a blessing without it I’d die. I never questioned the treatment I was getting because I was just so thankful that I could. Maybe I was lucky because my techs had experience and the nurses did too. But I did start to see things the longer I was on dialysis, like not properly cleaning my fistula to grabbing the syringe bucket (that’s covered with everyone’s blood) to move it and not changing gloves afterwards. Once I switched location to see new faces and a different part of the city. This was after about three years on. Well it was worse I didn’t realize they had a way lower budget for that clinic. Most of the people there were African American and Hispanic ( which = low budget 😒) with about three white patients, so I stayed too see how things were for a bit. It was terrible nobody was getting long enough treatments, everyone was getting cut off early to squeeze another person in. One day when I was walking into the clinic the facility administrator saw me walking in behind him and didn’t hold the door open ( that’s cool 🤷🏽♂️) so i ring the bell to go in. They see who’s at the door with a camera. Well they didn’t let me in for 40 minutes and when they did I see him (FA). Not doing anything and standing where the monitor is where the camera feed goes while the techs are running back and forth trying to get patients on and off, there’s people bleeding and my chair isn’t even ready. I lost close to two hours that day, time i will never get back. Throughout the two weeks I stayed there before going back I lost about 12 hours. That just wasn’t gonna keep me alive but I learned then that this system wasn’t good, that people were dying way sooner because they were getting robbed of their treatment. They were basically killing their patients and for what to hit a quota. This broke my heart those patients deserve proper care and that just wasn’t it. I left to my old clinic knowing now just how lucky I actually was. This makes me so upset 😔.
There is a program also that gives anyone the option to donate to someone else if they don’t match their loved one in exchange for a matched kidney somewhere else. The refer to it as a “kidney chain”
I gave my mom a kidney 8 years ago and she is better than ever. She was on dialysis for 11 years and was hospitalized many times for bleeding out in the middle of the night developing mental and other physical diseases due to the harsh effects of dialysis, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. She was very sick after her treatment every time she often would loose the entire day. It was like she was only living 4 days of her week. I’m glad Mr. Oliver did an episode on this because it reaches everyone’s lives and is rarely talked about. I don’t feel like an extraordinary person for donating. I just know that given the opportunity and proper education about the procedure, anybody would do it.
John, you and your writers are fantastic human beings for exposing people like this. I did just want to add for the public's knowledge, however, that there are some cases where dialysis is the better option. People seem to think that transplants just solve all the problems. Working extensively in a transplant clinic has taught me that that's not always the case. Transplant operations are huge, take an enormous toll on the body, and you need to be on meds and be followed for the rest of your life. If you're young and relatively healthy other than with kidney problems, then definitely. But for people who are much older, weaker, have several health problems, a transplant can actually be a terrible idea and dangerous for the patient. Not even trying to play devil's advocate here, I just want to dispel the rumor that a transplant is for everyone and a relatively easy fix. It goes much deeper than that. That being said, we need a whole revamp on the dialysis system! Thanks for continuing to educate us!