Sally Satel's Plan To Get People To Donate A Kidney To A Person In Need
Sally, whom I just met in person for the first time at LA Times Festival of Books (after having her on my radio show), has the kidney of an LA friend of mine.

She writes in The New York Times about the reality of the dwindling supply of kidneys and how that might change:

The problem lies in the requirement that all organs be given altruistically (as a friend did for me in donating her right kidney eight years ago). Federal law is widely interpreted as forbidding donors to receive anything of tangible value in return for their lifesaving deeds.

We can't solve the issue merely by getting more people to sign organ donor cards -- though everyone should -- or even by moving to an opt-out system, under which we would harvest people's organs at death unless they had earlier indicated they didn't wish to donate them. These solutions can do only so much, because relatively few people die in ways that leave their organs suitable for transplantation.

To make a real impact on kidney shortage, we have to find ways to persuade more healthy young and middle-aged people to give a kidney to a stranger.

Here is a plan to do just that. Donors would not get a lump sum of cash; instead, a governmental entity, or a designated charity, would offer them in-kind rewards, like a contribution to the donor's retirement fund, an income tax credit or a tuition voucher.

Meanwhile, imposing a waiting period of at least six months would ensure that donors didn't act impulsively and that they were giving fully informed consent. Prospective compensated donors would be carefully screened for physical and emotional health, as is done for all donors now.

These arrangements would screen out financially desperate individuals who might otherwise rush to donate for a large sum of instant cash and later regret it.

The donors' kidneys would be distributed to people on the waiting list, according to the rules now in place. (People who wanted to donate a kidney to a specific person -- say, a father to a son -- would still be able to, outside this system.) Finally, all rewarded donors would be guaranteed follow-up medical care for any complications, which is not ensured now.