Ways and Means: November and December 1971
The House Ways and Means Committee, as part of its hearings on national health insurance, devoted the end of the morning of November 4, 1971, to testimony about ESRD (U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Ways and Means, 1971c). It particular, it heard from representatives of the National Association of Patients on Hemodialysis (NAPH). These included Shep Glazer, vice president of the group and a dialysis patient from New York; William Litchfield, a dialysis patient from Houston; Roland Fortier, an NAPH member from Connecticut; Peter Lundin, a medical school student who was also a dialysis patient and NAPH member from California; June Crowley, a dialysis patient from New York; and Abraham Holtz, a dialysis patient from New York.

Glazer made an official statement for NAPH, and then spoke about his personal situation:

I am 43 years old, married for 20 years, with two children ages 14 and 10. I was a salesman until a couple of months ago until it became necessary for me to supplement my income to pay for the dialysis supplies. I tried to sell a non-competitive line, was found out, and was fired. Gentlemen, what should I do? End it all and die? Sell my house for which I worked so hard, and go on welfare? Should I go into the hospital under my hospitalization policy, then I cannot work? Please tell me. If your kidneys failed tomorrow, wouldn't you want the opportunity to live? Wouldn't you want to see your children grow up? (U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Ways and Means, 1971b)

The most dramatic moment of the hearing, however, came when Glazer was briefly dialyzed before the committee. This event was widely publicized afterwards and was believed by many to have been decisive in the decision of Congress to enact the kidney disease entitlement.

In fact, great ambivalence surrounded this dialysis “session.” The hearing record, for example, mentions only that a dialysis machine was brought to the hearing room but not that Glazer was dialyzed (U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Ways and Means, 1971b). The session had been arranged by Glazer and Ways and Means Chief Counsel John M. Martin, who consulted William Fullerton, the committee staff person for health. Neither was enthusiastic; indeed, Martin was afraid of what might happen if Glazer died in front of the committee. Nor did the other members or their staff think it was especially appropriate. Plante remembers that the senior staff aide to Barber Conable (R-N.Y.), when he saw Glazer being dialyzed, exclaimed “What the f—is going on here?” But the committee had a tradition of hearing anyone who wished to testify, and it chose not to change its rules in this instance.

Glazer, at a New York NAPH press conference on November 3, the day before the hearing, had announced his intention to undergo dialysis before Chairman Mills and the Ways and Means Committee. The National Kidney Foundation opposed the effort—directly in discussions with Glazer and indirectly through Eli Friedman, advisor to NAPH. Schreiner and Plante had been lobbying Congress assiduously, seeking support for kidney treatment programs from all sources—the tax committees, the health legislative committees, and the appropriations committees. They feared that an accident would cancel all the progress they had made, and Schreiner stressed this possibility when he tried to dissuade Glazer from dialyzing before the committee. Given these activities, Schreiner's incredulity was all the greater when he received a telephone call at home on the evening before the hearing. Glazer had arrived in Washington, D.C., from New York, and was calling to ask Schreiner if a Georgetown University dialysis machine could be brought to the hearing room the next morning for use at that time (Institute of Medicine, 1989). Schreiner, suppressing his anger, trucked a machine over to the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill. Barred from attending the hearing by the National Kidney Foundation, which did not wish him to lend its prestige to the event, he sent a Georgetown nephrology fellow, James Carey, to act as attending physician. If any untoward event occurred, Carey was instructed by Schreiner to clamp the blood lines, turn off the machine, and declare that the dialysis session was over.

Several years later, Carey disclosed to Schreiner that Glazer had gone into ventricular tachycardia during the dialysis session before the committee. Carey had immediately clamped the lines. The “treatment” was very short, perhaps five minutes in all, long enough to open the blood lines but hardly a dialysis session. Nevertheless, the few members of the committee who were present characterized the episode as “excellent testimony.” They were thinking broadly about national health insurance at the time, however, not about doing something special for dialysis patients. Indeed, Fullerton recalls that a parent of a child with hemophilia made a far greater impression on the committee. The national press, on the other hand, had been handed a dramatic story and publicized it widely. The myth that Glazer's treatment had been decisive in the decision by Congress to enact Section 299I had been established.

и еще: В далёком 1950г. в США в семье Ады и Гарри ДеБолд у их маленького сына был выявлен нефроз. В те годы об этом состоянии мало что знали и
не умели лечить. Благодаря усилиям Ады 15 ноября 1950 г. было созвано первое заседание Комитета по исследованию нефроза.
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Сына Ады и Гарри
спасти не удалось, но в результате активной деятельности Ады, объединившей врачей и семьи, в которых были дети с заболеваниями почек, появился Фонд. На протяжении 1950-х годов он занимался поддержкой пациентов с заболеваниями почек и их семей, просветительской
деятельностью и сбором средств для финансирования медицинских
нефрологических исследований.
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◽В 1960-х годах благодаря развитию медицины тяжёлые заболевания почек стали лечить с помощью гемодиализа и
трансплантации почек. В это время Фонд активно занимался помощью
пациентам на такой терапии, продолжал финансировать исследования по этой теме и получил первые государственные средства для своей деятельности❗ Эти деньги были использованы для создания центров для обучения врачей и медсестер по лечению пациентов с почечной недостаточностью; для скрининговых программ; для исследования причин и характера заболеваний почек и разработки более эффективного оборудования для диализа
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◽1964 г. из Фонд, созданный семьёй ДеБолд, преобразуется в Национальный Почечный Фонд США (National Kidney Foundation - #NKF).
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◽В 1970-1980-х годах NKF занимается активной пропагандой донорства почки.
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◽В 1997 г. NKF при участии большой группы специалистов из различных областей (нефрологии, эпидемиологии, клинической лабораторной диагностики, диетологии, социальной деятельности, геронтологии,
семейной медицины) создаёт «Инициативу по обеспечению качества результатов при заболеваниях почек» (NKF KDOQI - National Kidney Foundation Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative), которая предоставляет научно обоснованные руководства по клинической практике для разных заболеваний почек и связанных с ними осложнений.