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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (263758)	5/9/2008 5:29:25 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You are no doubt right that they don't capture the full value of the parts at free market prices: <"They capture the value of the organs in their billing procedures." No, they capture the value of their skills, their education, and their time. Only the recipient captures the value of the organ.> But they definitely get to do some seriously high-end billing. How do you think a patient would get on haggling for a lower price? The answer would be, "Well Sir, we have a long line of people who are very keen to get the benefit of this bereaved family's extremely kind gift of life and of course we have to be paid for our skills, education and time and we certainly don't want to pass on any of that money to the bereaved, so if you don't like it, you might like to sign this consent form for us to harvest your body parts when you join the deceased next week... snicker... oh, you'll agree to our fee after all. Excellent." Medical "ethics" and the Hippocratic oath are not marvels of modern medicine. They are a joke. It's amusing that the Medical Cartel is allowed to gain financial benefit from body parts, the recipient gets a huge benefit, the hospital cashes in, the politicians and lawyers who make and enforce the laws get their salaries, but the body part donor or their estate are not allowed any benefit. It doesn't take much of an economist to figure out that there won't be a huge surplus of body parts when the price put on them is zero. Production and supply of most things is near zero if the value put on them is zero. Doctors and, ahem, "Ethicists" obviously have not the slightest concept of supply, demand, price, price elasticity, consumer surplus and such economic jargon. I would advise people to NOT allow anyone to plan to take body parts from themselves or their loved ones. Under the present scheme, anaesthetists and the Medical Cartel have incentive to look with avaricious eyes at a wounded person and evaluate their prospects as a collection of body parts ripe for harvest. In the right borderline circumstances it would take just a little bias for the outcome to go one way or the other. If there is NO prospect of a highly profitable harvest of organs, then there is no advantage to the Medical Cartel to tell next of kin it's game over and how about we turn off life support now while the parts are still fit to save other people. "Go on, let's turn it off and at least not have your tragic loss be in vain. Come on, let's do it now..." Mqurice