Transplant Sales

Drew Carey has a video on reason.tv about the possibility of a market for donor kidneys. He interviews recent kidney donor Virginia Postrel. I think Postrel has it just right: If the 1984 law criminalizing organ sales were simply repealed, here's what I think would happen. In the short term, neither public (Medicare, Medicaid) nor private insurers would cover the cost of paying vendors. Many hospitals would not accept them either, just as many until recently would not accept donors who learned about their recipients from media accounts or sites like MatchingDonors.com. But some transplant…