Organ transplants

During the debates on Obamacare the phrase, “death panels” came up and was roundly discredited but those who understand how health care works know that rationing, which is a euphemism for death panels, is a necessary part of any health care system. If you take a minute to think it through you will quickly come to the understanding that not all people can have all care all the time so rationing is the answer. I have pointed out on several occasions how a government program like Medicare can ration care. Private companies find this more difficult because they are subject to competition. One example of rationing is organ transplants. Patients who need organ transplants are dying even while viable organs are being thrown out, as government regulations have forced centers to focus on overall post-transplant survival rates instead of the well-being of individual patients. Medicare rules determine who gets a transplant based on one year survival rates. This means that higher risk patients are passed by so as not to lower the success rate That has prompted many centers to choose healthier patients and higher quality organs to transplant. High-risk patients that could pull down a center’s overall survival rate are often unable to get on the transplant list, or end up dying on the waiting list as centers pass on marginal but still usable kidneys, livers and lungs.