Something I have been thinking
recently about is the organ transplant market which limits the amount of organs
that can get to people. More than 92,000 people are waiting for a kidney in the
United States but there are less than 17,000 that were made available for
transplant last year. In the world there were less than 65,000 kidney transplant
operations in 2007. More than 5,000 people die waiting every year waiting for a
kidney. The chance that people will get a kidney has also been decreasing over
time. In 1992, there was a 50% chance of getting a kidney on the waiting list.
These days that percentage is down to only 20%. People who have to wait have to
be placed on dialysis which is not only time consuming but also usually have to
go three times a week for many hours. People who have a kidney transplant live
on average 10 to 15 years longer than if they were on dialysis. The cost of dialysis is not cheap either.
Dialysis alone consumes 10% ($17 billion per year) of the Medicare budget.
Due to the 1984 law entitled the National
Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) it is illegal to except payment for organs. This is
interesting because people accept payment for donations like blood, sperm, and
we all sell our brains on a daily basis. Due to this act it has lead to the
underground system of illegal organ donations. According to Havoscope the
average price paid for a kidney buyer is $150,000. This
recent article talks about how in China, India, and Pakistan people are
paying $200,000 for kidney even though they only offer the donor $5,000. The
high price of what someone would pay for a kidney signals that there are not
enough kidneys to go around. Economist Gary Becker has done some work on this
subject and in
this paper estimates that at a price of $15,200 per donor there would be a
large supply of available kidney donors. Iran has actually paid people $1,200 along with some health insurance and no longer have a shortage.
In a market system people who donated their
kidneys would be rewarded if they kept their kidneys in pristine condition.
This would allow them to get a premium which would increase the quality of the
kidney that was donated which I would predict increase the quality of life the
donee would have. The risk of dying in a kidney transplant is 0.1% and if we
legalized it would decrease even further as transplant surgeons figured out how
to make it not only better but safer. People who are against organ sales or “do-gooders”
argue that people who want to donate their kidney are of course not rational, have no idea what
the consequences are, and left to their own devices would not be able to make a
decision unless a bureaucrat decided for them. If someone regardless of their financial
position wants to sell something that they own who are we to tell them what they
can or can’t do? If a person is offered $20,000 for their kidney which they
could use to pay down debt, go to college, or start an investment fund what is
the harm in that?
Allowing people to sell their
kidneys would work wonders for all the people that have to suffer and worrying
about waiting for a kidney. What do politicians tell to the families of the
5,000 people that died waiting for a kidney?
The donors will be better off because they will be compensated and the
donee will be better off because they will not have to go on dialysis which is
time consuming and expensive. By doing this the amount of government support
for dialysis would be reduced which I think is highly desirable. As Walter E.
Williams would say the true test of whether one owns something is whether or
not he can sell it. By definition according to the government individuals do
not own their own kidneys.
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