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Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
| Subject: The moral case for paying kidney donors Fri Mar 11, 2016 7:21 pm | |
| Each week, In Theory takes on a big idea in the news and explores it from a range of perspectives. This week we’re talking about government compensation for organ donors. Need a primer? Catch up here.
Scott Sumner is a professor of economics at Bentley University and director of the Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center.
A recent study in the American Journal of Transplantation just reached what to many people may be a shocking conclusion: Taxpayers would be able to save thousands of lives and about $12 billion per year if the government started compensating people for kidney donations. According to the study, “these numbers dwarf the proposed $45,000-per-kidney compensation that might be needed to end the kidney shortage and eliminate the kidney transplant waiting list.” For economists who have long advocated for the creation of a market of organ transplants, this news is not surprising.
Shortages occur when regulations hold prices below equilibrium — that is, where the demand of a product and supply of a product meet. Often the result is simply inconvenience, as with the shortage of apartments in New York or the long gas lines in the 1970s.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/12/30/the-moral-case-for-paying-kidney-donors/ |
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