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Contact: FAIR Foundation Press Office (760) 200-2766 Immediate Action is needed to Reverse America’s Organ-Donor Crisis A recent USA Today editorial(1) calls for paying students to encourage good grades. If that time has come, then surely it is time to provide reimbursement to donors to reverse America’s organ-donor crisis. If you were a physician in charge of an emergency room in which 100,000 (2) people were waiting and one was dying every hour, (3) would you tell the hospital directors that you didn’t need to try new policies? Of course not, you’d be fired. Yet those in charge of our transplant system are doing just that by refusing to adopt the new organ donor policies of “Financial Incentives and Presumed Consent.”(4) "Financial incentives" would proceed as follows: in a government regulated system, living donors and cadaveric donor families would be offered their choice of the following incentives should they agree to donation: $50,000 cash payment or a decade of medical insurance (Medicare) or a $50,000 tax benefit. In the case of the living donor, all hospital expenses of surgery and follow-up care would be provided and he/she would be reimbursed for lost wages if employed. It should be noted that 45 million Americans are without medical insurance and 79 million have medical bill or medical debt problems. Can a person "buy" an organ? No. Who pays the $50,000? Insurers. Sixty percent of transplants are kidneys. Each patient taken off of the kidney waiting list saves up to $400,000 for the payers [Medicare (60%) or private insurance companies]. A deceased donor who provides two kidneys would save these payers between $400,000-$800,000. But, you reply, payments to donors are forbidden by law--the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA). (5) Yes, and when NOTA was passed in 1984 there was NO waiting list data.(6) When the waiting list data was started in 1989 there were only 19,095 patients waiting by 12/31 of that year. With 100,000+ waiting now, we cannot afford the luxury of moralizing that helping a donor family with finances is unethical. NOTA allows payment to almost everyone in the transplant chain such as hospitals, organ procurement organs, physicians, nurse coordinators, et al, and appropriately so. Who are the only people not reimbursed?? The most important persons in providing the “Gift of Life”: a living donor or a deceased donor whose family could accept compensation on his behalf. Presumed Consent works as follows: Every American’s wish will be honored as follows: extensive publicity will notify all that they will be presumed to be an organ donor and that if they object, they may "opt-out." Those who opt out will be kept in an registry to insure their wishes are honored. PC is a policy that is in effect in over 20 countries, including Spain whose opt-out rate is 2 percent versus 98 percent who will be donors. California’s donate-life online registry is signing up donors at the rate of approximately one million per year. There are 36 million residents of California—we can’t wait 36 years to solve this crisis. When Presumed Consent is signed into law, the registry will be 100 percent filled and everyone will immediately be an organ donor except for those who don’t want to be altruistic and opt out. If they do opt out, they will not be eligible for to receive an organ should be become ill and need transplant. It
is time to admit the obvious and speak to your legislators: the
wonderful, philanthropic policy of altruism is failing to meet the
demands placed upon it by transplant waiting lists that continue to rise
rapidly. The need for you to act today is urgent, waiting patients are
dying—every hour. 2) http://www.optn.org/ 3)
http://fairfoundation.org/organdonation/waiting_list_death_rate.htm 5) Section 274e. http://www.optn.org/ContentDocuments/NOTA.pdf 6) http://fairfoundation.org/organdonation/UNSO_wait_list_history.pdf provided by UNOS |
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