Talmudic Jew'd AEI - "The U.S. Organ Procurement System"

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Watch your kids near AEI people... seriously...   :wtf:

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Press   Releases
The U.S. Organ Procurement System  :wtf:
 
 

   
No modern miracle is more welcome or controversial than the technology of organ transplants. Over the past forty years, better techniques and landmark drugs have greatly improved the transplant success rates for kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, and other organs. But every year, for at least the past thirty years, the number of patients needing an organ transplant has consistently exceeded the number of organs supplied. As a result, more than 7,000 people die each year in the United States (twenty per day) as a direct result of organ shortages. It is estimated that less than half of the almost 80,000 people currently on waiting lists will live to receive the transplants.  

In The U.S. Organ Procurement System: A Prescription for Reform (AEI Press, June 2002), economists David L. Kaserman and A. H. Barnett isolate the procurement issue from all others and make a compelling and persuasive case for markets in cadaveric organs. The authors argue that the organ shortage is the direct consequence of a long-standing policy--codified in 1984--that prohibits any payment whatsoever to the families of the recently deceased. All others in the transplant process--including surgeons, nurses, and organ procurement officials--are paid for their services. But the family of the donor, which is necessary for a transplant, must go uncompensated.

Medical policies typically do not change without the support of the medical community. The authors tell us that in December 2001 the American Medical Association debated a proposal to conduct trials in which payments to organ donors or surviving family members would be used to encourage cadaveric organ collections. Because the opposition tabled the proposal, a vote was not taken. But a vote is expected at the AMA's July 2002 meeting, and the proposal's passage appears to have a better chance.

Kaserman and Barnett suggest that many deaths could be avoided by the adoption of a more intelligent public policy for cadaveric organ procurement. They point out that:

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      More than 50,000 people have died over the past thirty years because of a growing shortage of cadaveric human organs--more people than were killed in the Vietnam War.
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      The only action required to resolve this problem is to repeal the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, which requires that all organ donations and acquisitions be free.
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      In economics, a straightforward solution to any shortage is to allow price to rise to its equilibrium, market-clearing level. The organ shortage is no exception.
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      Market prices provide incentives that induce us to do many things that we would not otherwise do, such as go to work. Paying a family to agree to organ donation is no more coercive than paying a coal miner to work in the mine or a professor to teach.
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      A market system would create a mechanism for voluntary exchanges at mutually agreeable prices.
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      Economic reasoning suggests that the price of cadaveric organs is likely to be quite low. Generally, the "next best alternative use" for cadaveric organs is burial. Currently, we collect well under half the cadaveric organs potentially useful in transplant operations. A comparatively small increase in price is expected to bring forth a relatively large increase in the quantity supplied.
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      Empirical estimates suggest that the organ shortage could be resolved at a price of less than $1,000 per donor—a tiny fraction of the cost of a transplant operation and an even smaller fraction of the cost of keeping patients alive through alternative treatments such as dialysis.
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      A difference exists between a market for acquiring organs and a market for distributing organs. Use of the market system to procure organs does not require the use of the market system to allocate them. An analogy would be food prices. We do not stipulate that food prices be zero because of the disincentives to food producers and the shortages that would arise. Instead, we allow market forces to establish an equilibrium in food prices and then subsidize purchases by low-income individuals.
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      Any potential problem related to premature termination of care is likely to be greater under the current system than it would be with a cadaveric organ market. Shortages invariably result in inflated values of goods, which, in turn, tend to foster black-market activities.

David L. Kaserman, who has had two kidney transplants, is the Torchmark Professor of Economics at Auburn University. A. H. Barnett is professor and chairman of the Department of Economics, International Studies, and Public Administration at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and professor of economics emeritus at Auburn University.

http://www.aei.org/press/13