Michael Hiltzik: Dialysis firms try to strong-arm Gov. Newsom into vetoing a bill capping their profits

The businesses that lobbied the California Legislature over measures that would help or harm them know their work isn't done just because the lawmakers have cast their votes and gone home for the year. There's still Gov. Gavin Newsom's signature or veto to be won.

Among the players stepping forward is the American Kidney Fund, which paints itself as a charity devoted impartially to helping patients facing the torment and expense of dialysis. The fund's target is a bill passed Sept. 10 that would cap the profits enjoyed by corporate dialysis providers and impose disclosure requirements on third parties, like the fund, that help dialysis patients afford their insurance.

The fund claims that the measure, Assembly Bill 290, would force it to break federal law. Therefore, it says, if Newsom signs the bill, the fund will abandon the patients it has been helping in California.

"We are informing all of our grant recipients in California and the social workers at the clinics, hospitals and nursing homes where they are treated that