On Nov. 4, 1971, Shep Glazer, a New Yorker on renal dialysis, treated the House Ways and Means Committee to a grim five-minute show-and-tell. It was the first and probably last time an artificial kidney machine appeared on Capitol Hill.
Nearly a year to the day later, President Richard M. Nixon signed a Social Security bill that included a curious provision to help Glazer and others like him: Anyone with chronic renal disease, or who would require a kidney transplant, automatically qualified for Medicare regardless of age, according to the bill the Republican president received from the Democrat-controlled 92nd Congress.
