Lessons from mortality risks and rates

It seems agreed that annual mortality rates for dialysis patients reflect a considerable range from unit to unit, doctor to doctor, region to region and country to country. The US, starting late in its distribution efforts, without a system for universal health care, has done a remarkable feat in enabling close to 200,000 uremic patients to survive on dialysis at a unit cost which has steadily declined since 1973. Nothing else procured by our Government has declined in cost during those inflationary years. Moreover, the transplant rate has been the envy of many, limited mainly by the supply of organs and catering to many foreign-born nationals in the process.