Science / Medicine : Pay Urged for Organ Donations
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Families who donate a deceased relative’s organs should be reimbursed for burial expenses, a group of transplant experts recommends. If a person declares a decision to donate his own organs upon death, the same amount of money should be paid instead to his estate or a beneficiary, the experts said.
The proposals, made at a conference last week in New Orleans sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation, are aimed at increasing the supply of donated organs, which falls far short of demand.
The experts did not decide who should pay for the program. The possibilities discussed include insurance companies that cover people who go on the waiting list to receive an organ, or Medicare or Medicaid for those people.
