Living Donors Online Message Board
Living Donation Discussion and News => Living Donation in the News => Topic started by: Karol on July 18, 2014, 10:14:22 PM
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Kidney Donation too Expensive for Poor Donors
By Staff Reporter Jul 18, 2014 06:19 AM EDT
A new study suggests that kidney donation is too expensive for some potential donors. The research might explain why kidney donations have dropped in the past few years.
The cost of donating a kidney is about $5000 and in some areas, as high as $20,000, researchers said.
The study, conducted by researchers at Jagbir Gill, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and colleagues, could help policymakers understand the financial aspect of organ donations and design effective strategies to address the issue.
For the present study, researchers used median household income level of residents' zip codes to divide U.S population into different groups. Researchers then examined the rates of donations between 1999 and 2010 in both high and low income groups.
The team found that rates of living donations in the low-income group were consistently lower. However, the rates reached a record low in recent years.
The high income group registered high living donation rates.
"Since 2004, lower income populations experienced a large decline in living donation, while living donation in higher income populations was more stable," said Jagbir Gill, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver). "These results suggest that financial barriers to living donation need to be further addressed in order to make it easier for patients to consider and pursue living kidney donation."
The study is published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).
A related study had recently reported that living donors face insurance problems. About 15 percent of kidney donors in a study reported that they were denied health insurance, while 12 were charged a high premium. This study was conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Medicine.
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/8120/20140718/kidney-donation-expensive-poor-donors.htm
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Hi Karol,
Thanks for the article! I think the “hidden” costs of kidney donation are a huge barrier to many people donating. There’s actually a petition to help with this issue going before the House of Representatives, sponsored by Stop Organ Trafficking Now! (SOTN). It calls for 6 major changes to the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, one of which is to allow Medicare coverage of non-medical donation related expenses for living donors who meet certain criteria. The bill would also allow IRS-approved charities to help living donors with non-medical donation-related expenses while prohibiting compensation for brokering donor/recipient matches. You can sign a petition for Congress to look at the bill: https://www.change.org/petitions/u-s-house-of-representatives-help-sotn-convince-congress-to-save-lives-and-money-by-amending-the-national-organ-transplant-act-to-remove-the-financial-disincentives-that-hinder-living-donation (https://www.change.org/petitions/u-s-house-of-representatives-help-sotn-convince-congress-to-save-lives-and-money-by-amending-the-national-organ-transplant-act-to-remove-the-financial-disincentives-that-hinder-living-donation)
For more information and background on the proposed bill, you can visit http://www.stoporgantraffickingnow.org/.
Best,
Brandy
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Dear Brandy,
Interesting proposal. Are you affiliated with this organization? Some familiar names on the "About Us" page: http://www.stoporgantraffickingnow.org/about-us/
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Hi Clark,
I am! I thought this forum would be a great way to get the word out. If there are any specific questions, I would be happy to try and answer them. Thanks!
v/r
Brandy
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Dear Brandy,
The National Living Donor Assistance Program already exists and is funded, https://www.livingdonorassistance.org/. It's an official institutional attempt to reduce the financial disincentives of concern in the posted article at the national level. I'm not clear on how this relates to lobbying to stop or reduce human trafficking for transplantation, laudable though that mission is. Thanks.