Treatment of End-Stage Renal Disease

The End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) program was enacted by Congress in 1972 to provide Medicare funding for the treatment of chronic renal failure in all patients who required it and could presumably benefit from it. Eligibility was supposed to be determined solely by medical need. With financial barriers to treatment removed, it was thought that the number of patients in the ESRD program would increase rapidly, approaching a final level that would reflect chiefly the incidence of terminal renal failure and the average length of survival of patients under treatment.In the eight years since the law took effect, . . .