The Problem of Kidney Donors’ Compensations

 

The issues, related to organs donations, moreover to the financial side of the problem, are rather sophisticated. On the one hand the medical science made a serious step forward, when in the year 1954 the human kidney was transplanted for the first time. On the other hand such medical practices led to numerous serious ethical, moral, financial, technical dilemmas and discussions. Nowadays all these issues are actual, as there are millions of people all over the world, waiting for such operation, in many cases the operations are delayed, people suffer from constant hemodialysis, or even die because of some formal obstacles. As a result there developed a strong need to find the correct and maximum advantageous option for all sides, which would be aimed at decrease of death of the patients, correspond to all norms of morality and ethics and would be financially legal.The Problem of Kidney Donors’ Compensations

According to the statistical data, the number of people, waiting for organ transplantation operation, grew from 31.000 persons in 1993 to 101.000 in 2013. This is evident, that the problem of supply and demand ratio was not solved, and is only growing further. This is a wide spread opinion, that the solution of this problem lies only in the financial sphere. Selling of human organs became illegal with the “National Organ Transplant Act, passed in 1984, states that human organs cannot be exchanged “for valuable consideration,” meaning something of monetary value” (Rettner, 2010). At the same time there is certainly the possibility to work out the legal system of providing incentives for organ donors – tax credits, other types of payments. Still there are a lot of discussions, related to the dangers of unregulated markets of human organs, which is certainly a risky thing. The opponents of these incentives, unfortunately do not consider such facts that donors, even if they reveal altruism and agree to donate the kidney for no financial compensation, would probably have the expenses, related to their travelling, that the time spent at hospital is the time, when they are not able to work and earn money and finally there are still risks of some kinds of complications after the operations or later, which would without any doubts need additional financial resources to be solved.The Problem of Kidney Donors’ Compensations

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Taking into consideration the actual situation with donorship, one of the best options for starting to solve this problem seems to be test incentives. “A series of pilot trials should be run to test an arrangement whereby a state or federal government offers interested, healthy donors a benefit for donating a kidney to a stranger.” (Bramstedt, 2014). There is a list of possible variants, including for example the above mentioned tax credits, reconsidered retirement plans, special medical insurance and so on. The statement, which is used by most opponents of paid donorship that only people of low income would like to donate their kidneys, seems to be a prejudice. The lists of patients, waiting for kidney transplantation have the prevailing number of low-income patients. And at any rate, without making a real test it is not possible to state for sure, who would like to become a kidney donor for money.

Overall, we have briefly studied the problem of kidney donors’ compensations; having studied the researches, related to the topic, it is possible to conclude that the situation is versatile and sophisticated, however it doesn’t mean that there is no solution to it; one of best options could be testing of incentives with the aim to build a strong and beneficial system for patients and donors for the future at least.The Problem of Kidney Donors’ Compensations