A recent research suggests that paying kidney donors can be cost effective when compared to the current organ donation system.
The research suggests that the number of available kidney donations in the U.S. will increase each year and at the same time transplants will get cheaper in the country if kidney donors were paid a fee of $10,000.
On October 24, 2013, a study was published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, which indicates how paying kidney donors can reduce the cost for many health-care systems.
The National Kidney Foundation confirms that there are around 118,617 people waiting for lifesaving organ transplants in the U.S. and around 96,645 of the patients are waiting for a kidney transplant.
Kidney transplants are supposed to be the best treatment available for patients with failing kidneys. However, it is difficult to find people who are willingly able to donate their organs and the kidney donation rate has hardly changed in the last decade.
The idea of paying kidney donors may trigger a debate in the medical community and may raise many questions involving ethical and moral as well as legal issues. Paying people for human organs such as kidney is illegal in the U.S. but in Iran it's legal.
"If the number of kidney donations rose by a conservative figure out five percent, it would cost $340 less to treat each patient than it currently does. This savings, which more than exceed the cost of paying the donor, would come from the fact that dialysis costs would be lower. If the number of kidneys available for transplantation increased by 10 - or even 20 - percent, then the savings would rise even further, the authors said. With a 10 percent increase, the savings realized would be $1,640. And, with a 20 percent increase, the savings would be $4,030," reports Guardian Las Vegas.
The study suggests that kidney transplant has a higher upfront cost; however, the yearly maintenance cost will be lower when compared to dialysis. Moreover, a kidney transplant will also improve a patient's health.
