Carla can't afford private health insurance. And like the estimated 5,500 immigrants in the U.S. illegally who need dialysis, the only publicly funded insurance she's eligible for is a government program called Emergency Medicaid.
But in most states, including Indiana, hospitals can't bill Emergency Medicaid until they know for sure they're dealing with an emergency. So for kidney disease, doctors will often wait until there are dangerous levels of potassium in the blood or fluid in the lungs — levels they deem urgent enough to merit hospitalization.
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