It seems to me that human organs are pretty valuable things. Here in the U.K., transplants are usually carried out by the NHS, but in the US you don’t have UHC and the doctors earn a lot of money. So do they pay for organs? If not, surely they’re making a lot of money from a gift? Or does the government encourage organ donation with tax breaks? Or something else? Educate me.
The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 outlawed the sale of organs for transplantation. The costs of transplantation are all medical costs: paying for the doctor’s skill and time, for hospital stays, for medication, for aftercare. Additional costs can be incurred if complications or post-operative infections result.
But the organs themselves are never bought or sold legally.
But do donors get an inheritance tax break or something? Does the government offer incentives for people to donate organs after their death?
That I don’t know, other than to note that I was offered no incentives to put the organ donor notation on my driver’s license. I was made aware of the option and told how to activate it on my application (and the subsequent renewals) and that was it. I’ve been a potential organ donor for 20 years now and still haven’t received any tax breaks or monetary bonuses or anything.
Nope. It would be an incentive for the rich to buy the bodies of the poor.
So instead they just steal the body parts. 
BTW, while the information that jayjay provided in post #2 is true as far as it goes, I don’t believe it’s complete. Once the tissue is acquired by any of the various organizations that collect, prepare and transport it, everyone else involved in the tissue donation makes money. It’s only the donor, or the donor’s family, that is required to be altruistic.
That I do not follow. Anyway, one part of my ignorance of organ donation in America has been enlightened.
At least in the case of my friends, one was a donor for the other, the recipient’s health insurance covered any medical costs that the donor’s insurance didn’t cover. That was the only compensation for the donor. Well, that and watching his friend recover.
Side note: I can’t find a cite, but I briefly studied health economics, and one fact that we learned was that when in one case a city switched from an “altruistic” system of blood donation, to a “compensation” system, and the amount of donations plumetted, because it turned what was a charitable action, into an economic one, and the time and discomfort involved in donating wasn’t worth the compensation offered, so people stopped donating.
So compensation does not nessacerily increase the number of donations (although organ donation may be differentsince time isn’t a particular concern, and neither is discomfort).
Well, the arguments I’ve seen run something like this: The possible amount of compensation available for a tissue donation are going to be relatively low. If you look at the link I provided to the tissue bootlegging operation, they were playing procurers $500 for tissue from each corpse. And still making a profit selling that into the normal tissue transplant system.
So, let’s go wild and assume, for a change, that the open market can support a price higher than the black market price - and the tissue donor, or their family/estate can be paid $1000 for donation of all usable tissues from the body. That amount of money may prove to be a huge incentive for a family that is running close to insolvency, and faced with an unanticipated expense for a funeral. While the well-to-do may find that the value for keeping their loved one’s body intact is much greater than the utility and value they’d derive from $1000.
If you talk about actual organs things can get even bleaker. Consider Henry, a 20 yo, healthy young male. Decent grades but can’t get a scholarship and his family’s finances have just broken trying to get him a baccalaureate degree. He’s 90 credits in for an engineering degree, but unless he gets, say, $20,000 from somewhere, he’s going to have to leave school to work to try to save up money to come back. Which is not often a winning strategy.
Now consider the temptation that Henry would be facing if he could sell a kidney, for, say, $25,000 or more.
While I disagree with the decision to completely remove compensation from organ and tissue donation, I can’t say I don’t understand why a number of people are very concerned about the potential for abuses if unregulated market capitalism becomes involved with how organs and tissues are harvested.
Palikia’s plan was for her whole body to be used for instruction/research, if no tissue was suitable for transplant.
Due to a number of issues, only a few bits were actually harvested.
Her estate received a number of very sincere thank-you notes, just for her having tried to donate.
No compensation, no tax breaks.
And I’m sure she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
No, not in the US.
Relatives of deceased donors receive nothing material for the donation.
When there is a donation from a live individual their medical expenses for the actual donation are paid, but nothing else.