ABSTRACT
"As long as an Ernie Crowfeather succeeds in beating the system," Belding Scribner reflected in 1971, "it indicates that we're not ready to handle the problem of priorities and selection." A year later, Congress sought to resolve this problem by the passage of Public Law 92-603, the Social Security amendments of 1972. With the passage of PL 92-603 on 30 October 1972, Medicare insurance coverage for transplantation and dialysis was extended from those over sixty-five years of age covered by the original 1965 Medicare law to more than 90 percent of the United States population. By 1972 a number of factors had altered the government's position toward direct patient-care financing for end-stage kidney disease. In 1990, the Supreme Court upholds an agency decision to prohibit the use of dialysis machines and close all dialysis clinics, based on a cost-benefit analysis.
