Proposition 29 is worthy of your vote because it holds dialysis companies—worth billions of dollars and responsible for many lives—accountable to work for the well-being of their patients, not the pockets of their wealthy CEOs.

The many ads you may see with dialysis patients all claiming that Proposition 29 will “jeopardize” their ability to receive treatment and that it will put their lives in danger are false. 

Their reasoning behind claiming this is that clinics will have to close because if the proposition passes, it will be harder for dialysis patients to receive treatment. 

However, the proposition never states anything about closing clinics. In fact, the passage of this proposition would actually make it easier for patients to access treatment because clinics would have to accept all forms of payment. The proposition will actually make it less likely for clinics to shut down because it will require them to gain state approval before closing and make them need to have a legitimate reason to shut down.

The proposition will also make these dialysis clinics a safer place to receive treatment. In the paper “Transmission of Hepatitis B Virus in Dialysis Units: A Systematic Review of Reports on Outbreaks” by Fabrizio Fabrizi, Vivek Dixit, Piergiorgio Messa, and Paul Martin, it states that “multiple deficiencies in standard or hemodialysis-specific procedures was the most common route of patient-to-patient transmission of HBV [hepatitis B, with] 80% [of transmittance coming from that],” proposition 29 states that it will require the oversight of a licensed healthcare professional with six months of relevant experience either in person or through telehealth, which will help prevent the deficiencies in procedures stated in the review, thus lowering the number of dangerous hepatitis B cases in dialysis clinics. 

The proposition also would make the clinics more transparent for patients, requiring  them to list physicians who have ownership interest of 5% or more in a clinic. This is incredibly important as the leader in ownership of dialysis clinics worth over $9 billion has had to pay $350 million to resolve allegations of illegal kickbacks. We need to ensure that the corruption that has happened before  does not happen again.

When it comes to funding, the reason we see so many Proposition 29 ads is because the campaign that opposesProposition 29 is almost wholly funded by huge conglomerates like DaVita and Fresenius, both national, out-of-state businesses that own or run about three-quarters of the licensed clinics in California, with each donating $52 million and $27 millions respectively. 

Proponents for Proposition 29, like the local SEIU-UHW union, a workers union, have only been able to raise $8 million. 

DaVita and Fresenius are spending so much money on this campaign because they are scared that they will have to be held accountable for keeping their patients safe, and in turn, decreasing their profits.