Every month, hundreds of Americans die while waiting for a new heart, liver or kidney. What a waste — considering that thousands of healthy organs are senselessly buried in cemeteries. ……
Clearly, arms need to be twisted.
How would that be accomplished? The editors cite a proposed law that would:
“…let health insurers refuse transplant coverage to anyone who doesn’t sign an organ donor card — leaving a nondonor on the hook for the cost of transplant surgery, easily hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Of course, health insurance is controlled by government, so any law to let insurers refuse coverage is Orwellian nonsense, and the editors know it:
Yes, it is a shame that such heavy-handed moves are necessary to force people to get over their squeamishness about this, but that is the state of play. In New Jersey, roughly 5,000 people are waiting for transplants today…. And yet, more than two-thirds of us have not agreed to donate needed organs..
That’s why a bigger stick is needed
The editors advocate government force to impose their own beliefs, a fundamentally immoral and un-American action.
Let me state that I see nothing wrong with an insurance company tying organ transplant coverage to organ donation, as long as it is by prior voluntary mutual agreement between insurer and policy holder. Let me also state that I agree that it is right to donate one’s organs after death. I have long been an organ donor. And I cannot for the life of me understand how any person can in good conscience expect to receive an organ transplant while refusing to sign an organ donor card himself. But if his policy does not require it, then the insurer is obligated to cover the transplant.
But what the Ledger advocates is another mandate. No law has been introduced into the NJ Legislature, so it is unknown whether such a law would authorize – i.e., force – insurers to unilateral breach their contracts or whether they would be forced to include the organ donor condition in their future policies. But either way, mandatory encouragement is a contradiction in terms, as well as unjust and immoral.
I’ve left the following comments:
Posted by zemack on March 26, 2012 at 12:48PM
Mtown_Quaker: Nice job exposing the utter immorality of the “Golden Rule Act” and the national ban on organ donor compensation. [See comment thread]
All statists are wedded to the initiation of brute force (twisting arms and bigger sticks), and will almost always be quick to advocate more government coercion to correct the problems (here, the organ shortage) of previous government coercion (such as the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984). This is the piecemeal method by which America is moving toward a totalitarian state.
It’s time to reverse this sinister game. The miss-named “Golden Rule Act” should be defeated, and instead the organ donor market should be completely liberated. There is nothing wrong with a world where free and voluntary trade allows organ donors to profit from the transaction – a transaction or trade that also benefits the recipient. The right to freely contract to mutual advantage is a cornerstone of a moral society, and the practical benefits inevitably follow. All will benefit from the inevitable increase in the supply of organs, including the poor, who can benefit not only financially but also from charitable organizations that would arise to buy organs and then offer them for free or at a discount to individuals who meet their criteria for deserving recipients.
The government’s role in a free organ market would be in line with its only proper reason for being; the broader mission of the protection of individual rights. It should punish fraud or extortion, protect minors and the mentally incompetent from exploitation, etc., but otherwise protect the fundamental moral right to freedom of trade and contract
I also responded to comments left by Mike Begley on March 26, 2012 at 12:02PM:
Posted by zemack on March 26, 2012 at 5:16PM
Mike Begley: There is nothing fair about using government force to impose your own idea of “fairness.” I agree it can be hypocritical for an organ recipient to refuse to become an organ donor. But freedom does not guarantee that everyone will act morally, just that everyone is free. Using legislative force to impose one’s own moral standards on another is worse; it is democratic tyranny.
As I stated below, free trade in organs, within the proper legal context, is the only moral answer, as well as the practical answer to the organ supply/demand imbalance. I’m glad to see we agree that “Those who are willing to donate to improve organ availability will receive a benefit for doing so. If you give, then you get.” Unfortunately, you contradict yourself in the very next paragraph, when you state that “Organ sales cannot be the answer.” What do you think a voluntary sale is? It is a mutually beneficial trade; you give and you get. Apparently, you favor trade, as long as it is imposed by force – not a moral position.
As to your concerns about “social equality issues”, there is only one kind of equality that is just and moral, the American concept; the equal right of every individual to think and act on his/her own judgement, free from coercive interference by others, including others in the capacity of government officials. Any other type of equality is evil. Notice that the Star-Ledger would rather more people die waiting for organs than be free to engage in free trade. This type of equality results only in equality of death and poverty; and ultimately of slavery.
2 comments:
I'm with ya on all that. In passing, I just wanna focus on your mention of the piecemeal approach to establishing a totalitarian state.
That's the statists' approach, while never mentioning the goal: masters and slaves. Each piece is implicitly justified by altruism, sometimes mentioned very briefly, in flowery, non-essential terms.
Each piece is established "peacefully", by democracy. But it's actually initiatory force, and lethal, just like explosive force. People willingly, deliberately, fool themselves about it as long as it's only administered like slow, hard-to-detect oxidation. So people don't see the goal, although they could. They just have time to evade, so they do. If they think they can get use to it, in installments, that seems easier and better than fighting back. They prefer the "peace". And, they refuse to learn from history, for the same reason.
Establishing rights and freedom must also be piecemeal, but with the egoist moral basis publicly aired as thoroughly and essentially as needed, which, in due course, means completely, totally, with the ultimate goal, thorough-going individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism, put to the public in full intellectual view, and into the faces of the intellectual and political adversary and establishment.
Will that establishment let that goal be established, in its place, without upping the ante of initiatory force (democracy)they began to place, over 100 years ago, by any needed strippings away of the veneer of "peace"? If they don't, what then?
We will have been playing a game of "democracy", and pretending "peace", with them, while actually working toward our publicly stated goal. If they have to start dropping the game and pretence to defend and keep their statism, and do so, rather than give up, they'll still have the physical power meant for a representative system of law and government under individual rights.
It's my belief they'll use it, as needed. Again, if they do, what then?
You all need to read the book, "The Undead" I guess I am one of the selfish people who do not want to die the horrible deat the donor has to endure. Plus the donor gives his organs to the government and the government sells it back to himself in the form of medicaid and medicare. Something is wrong here. All major organs comes from the brain trauma victim most are males and are under the age of 24 and go to the elderly over the age of 60 who are on medicaid and medicare. Google heart, lungs, kidneys,liver transplants it sounds like an advertisement for a department store. Most transplants do not take and the recipients have to take an anti-rejection drug for the rest of their lives which breaks down their immunities and can cause cancer. This just sounds like the big business of the medical community and pharmacuetical companies. Since my daughter was let to die because she was a poor prognosis and poor outcome and the haste in which to acquire her organs was made. I began to research on brain trauma and organ donation. The two go hand in hand together. I think the government should be held liable for contracting to individuals who have not be given thier contract papers upon the requirement of their signature to be a organ donor. Every hospital surgury is required to inform the patient of the procedure and the outcome. Donors need to know they will be hooked up to a ventilator, that their heart will beat, their lungs will breathe, the heart will beat faster, they will perspire and that they may try to sit up in what is called the lazarus reflex, that sounds like being rised from the dead. The nurses have to be consoled that this patient really is dead even though he reacting to the scalpul coming to harm him. Organ donation is horrific, it is like braveheart in the hospitals OR room Transplant surgeons are like vultures devouring their prey. The donor entities and the government are the fat cats making the profits off of our loved ones and our ignorance. God help us.
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