People Die When the Market is Completely Suppressed
More than 93,000 patients are on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, and last year more than 4,700 patients died while waiting. That makes it especially tragic that more than 2,600 kidneys were recovered from deceased donors last year and then discarded.
Source: New York Times.
It hard to believe 2,600 kidneys were discarded after being removed. It there was a competitive market, the donor could put the kidney up for bid and a medical team that was ready (with a matching patient) could have bid on the organ. As with most competitive markets, the amount of the bid would have been determined by a variety of factors. But, I doubt if there would be discarded kidneys if the donors were allowed to auction them off.
Call me utilitarian, but in many ways I do agree with trying to do the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people. I believe that this plan would do just that.
I say give it the green light.
The article says that as many as half of those discarded kidneys could have been transplanted. There has to be more factors going into it — but at the risk of sounding callous, losing less than 2 percent of patients to inefficiency isn’t all that bad.
This seems like a never-ending story. We hear a lot about how most Americans go out of the country to receive care because the cost is lower in other places than in the US. But sooner than later the inefficient access to care in the US will far outweigh its high costs (if it doesn’t already), because it simply doesn’t make sense to have people dying while waiting to be treated, especially when costs are already so high! Where is all this money going? money is being wasted, people are being overcharged, and on top of that…you can’t even keep people alive. So sad and aggravating at the same time.
I think it’s interesting that they cite age-discrimination laws as a factor blocking reform. I think we apply many of our laws too literally and liberally without a mediating factor of common sense.
terrible to hear, but what alternative could be provided to make the system more efficient?
Seyyed: There are lots of ideas to make organ transplants work better. Check out this post (http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2009/11/who-gets-deceased-donor-kidneys.html) from a Stanford Professor of market design.