Sec. 2. Findings
509 words·~2 min read·
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Congress finds the following: As of January 2016, 121,000 people await an organ transplant, with 100,000 of those people waiting for a kidney, and average wait times are approaching five years for a kidney, with twice as many people being added to waiting lists as getting a transplant. Living donor kidney transplants peaked in 2006 and have declined since due to a scarcity of living donors. Of the roughly two million Americans who die annually, only 10,500 to 13,800, representing less than one percent of all deaths each year, possess major organs healthy enough for transplanting.
On average, 22 people a day died while waiting for an organ, with the majority of those people waiting on a kidney. In 2013 nearly 3,000 people were permanently removed from kidney waiting lists and 2,000 from liver, heart, and lungs waiting lists because they became permanently too sick to receive a transplant. 90% of dialysis patients are not employed because dialysis requires multiple treatments per week which last several hours and leave patients drained, thus creating a huge financial burden on the patients, their families, and the government which is not included in the cost estimates above.
A patient receiving a kidney transplant on average has an additional 10–15 years of life at a much more enjoyable and productive level as compared with remaining on dialysis, while receiving a kidney from a living donor providing 4–8 years of additional life as compared to receiving a kidney from a deceased donor. As medical advances extend people’s lives as they wait for an organ transplant, waiting lists will get longer and the costs for individuals and the Federal Government will increase significantly.
Roughly seven percent of the Medicare budget goes to the End Stage Renal Disease Program, with dialysis costing Medicare over $87,000 per patient per year, as Federal law dictates that Medicare will cover dialysis for everyone who has made minimal Social Security tax payments. A kidney transplant pays for itself in less than two years, with each transplant saving an average of over $745,000 in medical costs over a 10-year period, 75 percent of which is savings to the taxpayers.
Experts project that if the supply of transplant kidneys could be increased to meet the demand, taxpayers would save more than $5,500,000,000 per year in medical costs. The World Health Organization estimates that 10 percent of all transplants take place on the international black market, the last choice for desperate patients facing an alternative of death, however recipients often face infected kidneys and have poor health outcomes and donors are often victimized. Present policy on domestic donation, which is not evidence based and has never been subject to studies or pilots to determine effectiveness in increasing the availability of donated organs and the effectiveness of safeguards that prevent coercion or exploitation, precludes all but altruistic donation, prohibiting any form of incentive or benefit for donors.
Experts are arriving at a consensus that trials are necessary to find new methods of promoting additional organ donation which will save lives and reduce organ trafficking.