Column: The profiteering dialysis industry made big bucks from killing Proposition 8. Here’s how
LA TimesPatient Adrian Perez undergoes dialysis at a DaVita clinic in Sacramento. Case in point: The multimillion-dollar investment by two big dialysis companies in the killing of California’s Proposition 8. The industry’s two leading companies, Denver-based DaVita and the German healthcare conglomerate Fresenius, together accounted for $95.5 million of the industry’s spending against the measure. Had Proposition 8 succeeded, it’s a fair bet that the shares of both companies would have cratered, both because of the paring of their California revenues and the possibility that other states would follow suit. Senior executives typically hold sizable equity stakes in their companies; Kent Thiry, DaVita’s chairman and CEO, held more than 945,000 shares in the company as of March 31.
History of this topic
Prop. 23: What you need to know about the dialysis measure
LA Times
Why California dialysis clinics are spending $111 million to defeat a modest ballot proposition
Salon
Endorsement: Proposition 8 isn’t about dialysis care, it’s about punishing non-unionized clinics. Vote no
LA Times
Column: Dialysis firms’ profits are obscene. What will happen if California tries to cap them?
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