To me everyone should be. Think it’s kind of selfish to let viable organs go to waste when people are in need for them.

  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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    5 days ago

    My only problem with organ donation in the US is the recipient gets a huge bill, including $86,000 for the actual liver. The donors family gets nothing.

    So if someone gets into an accident and eventually dies, and is a donor, the family gets a massive bill, and the hospital makes $1M from the recipient.

    • __Lost__@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 days ago

      If the donor’s family were paid, it would no longer be a donation, it would be a sale. That opens the door for things like trafficking people to sell their organs.

      And the hospital doesn’t really make a ton of money from the transplant, they get paid for the entire stay. And if you are there for a transplant you need a ton of care and it costs the hospital a ton of money to take care of you. US hospitals are not a huge money making business.

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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        4 days ago

        it would no longer be a donation, it would be a sale.

        A friend’s father received a liver, among the line items of the $1.05M bill was $86,000 for the liver. So yes, organs are being sold.

        US hospitals are not a huge money making business.

        We’ll stop there. This is a USD 5.45 billion/yr INDUSTRY. The only people NOT making money are the donor’s families.

        • __Lost__@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 days ago

          I’ve been working in hospitals for 20 years and have seen our finances, they make very little profit on inpatient admissions, most patients are losses. Outpatient surgery and things like that are how they make money.

          Take your number of 5.45 billion profit for the industry. There are 6100 hospitals in the US. That’s an average of $893,442 per hospital. That’s not a lot of profit.