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 $10,000 for burial expenses to families that agree to allow their loved one’s organs to be used to save a critically ill patient’s life and help reverse America’s organ-donor crisis. 

If you were a physician in charge of an emergency room in which 97,000 ⁽²⁾ people were waiting and one was dying every 82 minutes, ⁽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 “Donation Benefits” or “Presumed Consent.⁽⁴⁾ 

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 were NO waiting list data.⁽⁶⁾ When the waiting list data was started in 1989 there were only 19,000 patients waiting. With 97,000 waiting now, we cannot afford to be so restrictive in our approach any more.

Who should pay the $10,000? All insurers shall pool their funds to make these payments available. Why would they do that, and be pleased to do so? Sixty percent of transplants are kidneys. Each patient taken off of the kidney waiting list saves insurers up to $400,000, be they Medicare (60 percent) or private insurance companies. A donor who provides two kidneys, for example, would save insurance companies or Medicare between $400,000 and $800,000. The insurers paying the $10,000 to the beneficiaries under this plan would save millions of dollars—a very cost effective policy and perhaps expensive subscriber premiums could fall or, at least, remain stable. 

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”—the deceased donor and his family, who shall accept compensation on his behalf. 

Presumed Consent works as follows: The PC motto is, “Your Choice First.” Every American’s wish will be honored as follows: extensive media publicity will notify all citizens that they will be presumed to be an organ donor and that if they object to that status, they may "opt-out." Indeed, those who say “no” by opting out will be kept in an opt-out 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. If their citizens can do it, our compassionate nation can also. 

It is time to admit the obvious and speak to your legislators: the truly wonderful 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 82 minutes.

Footnotes to be submitted with a mailed letter: 

1) http://fairfoundation.org/organdonation/grades_for_cash.pdf

2) http://www.optn.org/

3) This is derived by dividing the number of minutes in a year, 525,600 and dividing it by 6,384 deaths in 2006 of those on the waiting list http://www.unos.org/
     (Data>National>Waiting List Removals> Candidates>Death Removals by UNOS Status by Year)

4) http://fairfoundation.org/organdonation/contactcongressfororgandonation.htm

5) Section 274e. http://www.optn.org/ContentDocuments/NOTA.pdf

6) http://fairfoundation.org/organdonation/UNSO_wait_list_history.pdf provided by UNOS