There are more than 113,000 people on waiting lists for organ transplants. This includes those in desperate need of hearts, lungs, kidneys and livers. There were only 36,528 transplants performed in 2018. Roughly 20 people die each day waiting for a transplant.
The prognostication for most of these poor souls is not good. The time spent waiting in the queue can be devastating. Those in need of a kidney typically spend up to six hours, three days per week, trapped on a dialysis machine. We are torturing these innocent victims. This is a horror that cries out for rectification.
Mr. Trump has taken some teeny, tiny, baby steps in the direction of a solution. Present law prohibits paying donors outright; only travel and hotel costs can be refunded to them. A new proposal emanating from the Health Resources and Services Administration adds to this lost wages and child-care costs.
Also, the 58 organ procurement organizations are now evaluated solely on the basis of post-transplant survival rates. They are loath to work with donated organs less than optimal. They turn down some 75,000 viable organ donations annually for this reason. The administration's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will now add the number of transplanted organs to the evaluation of organ procurement organizations.
This is not "too little, too late." Every human life is precious, and these timid moves in the direction of sanity are to be welcomed.
But as all microeconomics professors try to drum into their students, price ceilings create shortages. Even faculty on the left side of the political spectrum acknowledge this primordial fact. This is true even when so important a resource as used human body parts are concerned.
Right now, apart from the aforementioned expenses for travel, lodging, lost wages and child care, the effective pay for a donor is zero. That creates a gargantuan shortage, in excess of 113,000 very sick people.
Supply curves tend to slope in an upward direction. The higher the price, the more the good in question will be forthcoming. This is yet another law emanating from the dismal science. If this present maximum price control of zero were entirely eliminated, more transplantable organs would inevitably be forthcoming. Yes, recipients would have to pay for them, as people do for all goods and services. But their very lives are at stake here. We do not have price controls of zero for other goods necessary for survival; for example, milk, bread, eggs, etc. If we did, these goods would be in short supply as well. Why pick on those who are in dire need of an organ transplant?
One objection is that the rich would be moved to the head of the queue if the market were allowed to be substituted for present economic arrangements. Yes, the well-to-do are the first to obtain all sorts of goods and services. That's one of the main reasons for striving to be wealthy in the first place. But when the lives of so many people hang in the balance, it is difficult to see why the poor, too, would not benefit from a free-market price.
Another explanation for this despicable practice is the thought that there are certain things that should just not be for sale; to wit, human body parts. Go tell that to the 113,000 people whose lives now hang by a thread. The choice is clear; indulging that selfish philosophical taste, or preserving life.
Then there is the fear that donors will be taken advantage of. For example, the young, the poor, the unsophisticated, will part with a kidney (we only need one of them) all too easily. But rules can be put in place to obviate difficulties of this sort. Moreover, it is likely that most donations will originate posthumously, obviating this drawback. Motorcycles are for good reason called "donor mobiles." They are typically ridden by young people with optimal organs who all too often die instantaneously; their organs enhance recipient survival rates. The difficulty is that permissions must be quickly obtained from grief-stricken parents.
Without price controls, insurance companies could cut through this red tape with prior contracts, thus saving lives without endangering unworldly live donors.
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Walter E. Block, Ph.D., the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University in New Orleans, formerly was professor and chair of the Department of Economics and Finance in the College of Business Administration at the University of Central Arkansas.
Editorial on 01/23/2020