The Wall Street Journal has been doing an excellent series on health care costs. Today they focused on dialysis. I didn't know that kidney patients consume 6.4% of the medicare budget while they make up just 1% of those using medicare. This is partly because congress voted to make medicare cover dialysis treatment and transplants no matter how old the patient. This includes those covered by private health insurance. Yes, insurance companies get a free ride on this one. What the hell!? Shouldn't private insurance companies cover their own kidney patients? We could save billions per year and hurt no one.
On October 30, 1972 the national ESRD program—Public Law 92-601—was passed as an amendment to the Medicare Act after only 30 minutes of debate with only one dissenting vote.
The bill, signed into law by President Nixon, gave all Americans the right to treatment for ESRD, regardless of age. ESRD was and remains the only medical condition given this status.
The law exceeded expectations and posed challenges due, in part, to its costs. At the time of its passage, the government expected to care for some 16,000 patients, a patient load reached by 1974. By 1999 there were one quarter of a million patients. Similarly, the annual budget was projected at $250 million but, by 2000, it was more than $15 billion. There are now 4,200 dialysis clinics around the country. Medicare covers 83 percent as primary or secondary payor.
Part of the reason for the out of control costs is the rise of diabetes.
