Opinion: Proposed bipartisan kidney legislation takes on kidney disease epidemic in America

It wasn’t that long ago that kidney disease was considered a terminal illness. The first successful kidney transplant occurred just 69 years ago and the first dialysis clinic opened 12 years later. Our health care system took longer to respond – it was another decade before a Medicare program was established to help pay for dialysis treatments and a national registry for organ donation matching wasn’t created until the late 1980s.