Eligibility for Disability : Tag Disability

Unless you have some other medical situation, I highly doubt that you
would qualify for disability for any kidney disease unless you have to
start dialysis. So, that choice might not even be open to you anyway.
Chronic kidney disease by itself is simply not considered to be a
disability unless you're in end-stage renal failure. Now, some people
might get it anyway, because they have cormorbid conditions that make
the whole situation worse and make it impossible to continue with
employment. It's not easy to convince insurance companies that it's
needed. They make the decision, you don't. All you can do is to decide
to apply, and then go through the almost mandatory appeals. Waits of a
couple of years are not uncommon, and if a person is really in need
during that time, the only option might be welfare.

I've been through all this myself, because I was self-employed as a
freelancer at the time my kidney function started really tanking after
almost 25 years of having IgAN. Despite my past military service, I
couldn't get any benefit for that, since the renal failure wasn't
really related to military service. As I gradually could work less and
less due to a series of hypertensive crises combined with asthma, I
had to start relying more and more on the social safety net. In my
world, most people who are on dialysis have to do the same.

But the bottom line is that it's very unlikely you can get disability
benefits of any kind, private or government, unless you are on
dialysis. Chronic kidney disease just isn't disabling enough until
that point. It shouldn't be a problem after that, though.

I manage with whatever disability benefits I paid for during my 30
years of working, a partly-subsidized apartment, and my drugs are paid
for by another provincial government plan. Transplant drugs are
extremely expensive. Mine are fully paid for (except for a $2 per
prescription co-pay which the pharmacy itself absorbs), whereas the
transplant patients who still work and have work-related prescription
coverage are on the hook for that 20% co-pay. This adds to a lot of
dollars when you're talking about transplant prescriptions. One
advantage in the US is that tranplant meds are covered for the first 3
years.

The only way to survive with minimal income is to minimize expenses,
which means things like doing without a car.

Once a person is on dialysis, even in the U.S., you're looking at
socialized medicine. Dialysis is paid for by the government because
it's too expensive, and so are most costs related to a kidney
transplant.