I think you are confusing a couple issues. First of all, asking doctors and hospitals to donate their services just because you donate your organs isn’t exactly fair to them. You are donating something that has no virtually no value to you, and you are asking them to work for free after spending over a decade of their lives learning the skills needed to do a transplant.

If the real economics involved in being a doctor vs. other career paths were really well known, we would have half as many doctors, and we would have to pay for ALL their training.

I am not aware of any data showing the wealthy get fastlined organs. Could you point us to some? I can tell you that socialized medicine moves the discrimination from the wealthy to the powerful and influential, because I lived it (and nearly died from it).

I am also not sure which way to stand on the selling of organs. I lean towards allowing the sale. If everyone who had no religious convictions against it were to donate, the resulting costs would be next to nothing due to over supply.

In fact, over supply would solve most of the existing problems with the whole system, and I think this is what Vermont is aiming for. If it works, it will turn out to be a really cheap solution.

Hospitals make big money performing transplants, recipients (or their insurance carriers) get charged hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the donor and his/her family gets squat.

I might feel comfortable donating my organs, if the hospital and doctors and medical consumable vendors are also required to donate their products/services. It would anger me too much to know that Humana Hospitals would stand to profit tens of thousands of dollars from my generosity…

And it would also be nice if organs weren’t fast-lined to the wealthy, famous and politically connected, with no regard to how deserving they were or much use they would get from them. Why did hundreds of Hepatitis patients get sidelined so Mickey Mantle could get a new liver in two days? Just to die of cancer a few months later?

So I’m really conflicted: in favor of giving life to others, but very much against propping up the broken and crooked system that distributes these precious gifts.

Vermont is opening the door to allowing the sale of human organs, for better or worse.

If something unthinkable happens to me and another person can get their eyesight back or live to see their grandchildren born then all the better. I don’t want to die, but if the unthinkable happens it would be nice if someone else enjoyed a real upside as a consequence of my misfortune.

Now that Saudi sheik thing is just horrific, and I believe the story. Tell me again why we are OK with spending a billion dollars PER DAY on imported oil?

Sounds like my Uncle. He has often bragged that he is an organ donor, but the final joke is on them: He’s lived his life in a way his organs won’t help anyone.

It sure seems to me that one could sign up for this, go for twenty years or so, save “all that money”, then, when you reach the point where you shouldn’t be driving anymore, just put in your will that you don’t want to donate your organs and want to be cremated (or buried) whole. So. What have they gained? Not a whole lot. What do the drivers save? A whole $25. a year or so? How much fuel oil will that buy me to keep warm with?

What is the point? Exactly. I am glad that my state lawmakers are busy with this, though.

The problem is that most people don’t think in terms of a lifetime annuity; they want cash now. And of course, the state doesn’t want to pay now and wait decades for a return on the investment. So to attain the “greater good,” the obvious solution is to take organs at the time of payment. There’s a lot of redundancy to the human body. One can get by fine with one lung, one kidney, one cornea, etc. Indeed, as Vermont voters have proven, a person can live a long life with half a brain.

The solution is of course, to get so many potential donors that there is no incentive for anyone to want any particular person’s organs.

Being O neg. I would feel guilty not being a donor, so I just have to live with the paranoia.

However, I want a bit more than “a free driver’s license” for my organs (and if I’m dead, the $$$ can be paid to my heirs)

It seemed that the sheikh traveled everywhere with a living organ donor–a handsome, strapping, 24-year-old athlete in perfect health. If the donor’s services were not needed, he simply continued to travel the globe with his boss, eating, drinking and schtupping his way through the best the world had to offer.

If the boss had a heart attack…well, that was part of the job description.

Oh snap.

–chuck

On the more relevant hand, I’m not sure I’m to big on this one. I’m arguing 99.9% of the time that we should make it harder to get a DL, not cheaper and easier. One of these days people will learn that the reasons the Germans can go 120 on the autobahn and still have less accidents than us is the fact they treat driving as a responsibility and a privledge, not a right to be given on our 16th birthday.

But hey, Vermont tends to be a bit on the wierd side.