This is a nice example of the difference between a healthcare industry and a healthcare service, of course. A healthcare service might choose to fly the liver 2000 miles to the most needy patient, for example.

@alphazero I disagree that you've identified the difference. If Jobs had been too ill to travel, I am sure his dollars could have chartered the flight of an available organ to him

Note that the POTUS might actually take longer to arrive than a non-POTUS (tm). There are undoubtedly significant security procedures and protocols that are followed when the POTUS goes anywhere. Most rich people can arrange for transportation without that time-consuming overhead.

@stanri It's possible, but the waiting time can be years (please sign up to be a donor if doing so aligns with your values!), so it can be quite a task to be "always at the ready" for a possible transplant, and even with such a plan, the implementation can take time. For example, many people on the donor lists will move to be near a transplant hospital, while POTUS travels around the world.

Is the organ business so regulated that I can't go (in the U.S.) to a dying person and make a contract to give their descendants a sum of money for the permission to use their organ after they have died? I suppose you could always find a country where this business is entirely unregulated, so I'm asking for the U.S.

@Peter-ReinstateMonica There's a law (I think) that specifically bans any kind of compensation for organ donation. It's why you have kidney exchanges (I'll donate a kidney to your relative, if you donate a kidney to mine) rather than a market.

@Peter-ReinstateMonica So even if one had money to pay a healthy adult for a kidney, and that person would want to enter into a voluntary contract to give up said kidney, the state uses it authority of violence to squash this form of Voluntarism.

@paulj Are any of us truly ever free if rich people can treat the poor as their disposable organ banks? /s

@paulj It's the same legal principle that prohibits voluntarily selling yourself into slavery. The theory is that poor people will be economically coerced -- it's not really a level market.

This should be the selected answer, the other answer is true literally, but not in practice.

@RockPaperLz-MaskitorCasket please sign up to be a donor if doing so aligns with your values!) If it does not align with someone's values they should have a hard, long stare at these values - or ideally have a walk in a hospital where people are waiting for organs. This may help to reassess them. Not giving one's orgnas is the equivalent of the kindergarten behaviour "I will not eat it but throw it away so that you cannot either".

@WoJ Not necessarily. It's perfectly acceptable for people to decide they don't want to put into some kind of public good. (Within the limits that opting out is technically possible of course.) The flipside of this decision is that they must not take advantage of that public good themselves. If you don't want to be an organ donor, you literally must be prepared to die for that belief if you get diabetes, liver failure or whatever.

@Graham: yes, you cannot of course force people to donate their organs. But then you can go for a strict opt-out approach (that would require someone to actually make the effort to register as a non-donor, and not leave that to anyone else such as family crying over the body). Besides that, a lot of values are very much theoretical - when someone is faced with reality (even as a spectator), such selfish values may change. Also, about your point of being prepared to die - it should be super strinct. There is no crying over spilt milk afterwards dura lex, sed lex.

Some people also have religious exceptions that prevent being an organ donor.

@RonBeyer Like I said, that's fine so long as their religious exception also prevents them from being an organ recipient.

@Peter-ReinstateMonica Not just for that, but also for the case where someone else has legal authority over a person. Power of attorney might spring to mind, but the more obvious example is convicted criminals. Involuntary unpaid (or virtually-unpaid) labour already happens; and if it walks like slavery and quacks like slavery, etc.. China is known to use prisoners who are executed or who die in custody for transplants, and Chinese prisoners are known to be killed with impunity, and sometimes for trade of body parts. Laws in the West prevent the possibility of this happening here.

@Graham: it does not matter what their religions say. If one does not accept to give their organs, then they will not receive any either, no matter the philosophy behind it. I can easily imagine a religion that does not allow for the organs to leave your body ("sanctity of the body") but then is open to some coming in in case it can save someone.

@alephzero Or if you're in Italy you get your kidney delivered in a Lamborghini equipped with an organ cooler.

@WoJ wrote ...If one does not accept to give their organs, then they will not receive any either... I'm not sure exactly which context this was written in, but from a legal context, I don't believe this is the case in most jurisdictions (but I'm also not very knowledgeable in the specifics, so I may be mistaken).

@RonBeyer Regarding some religions, I believe I heard this as well. In those situations I think it's best if the person reflect on their values and what their religion is telling them, and see whether there is a match or a disconnect. Much good and much harm has been done in the name of religion in our world.

@pipe I have never wanted to be a law enforcement officer until seeing the photo in the article you posted. I'll sign up for that job, but only if I'm delivering life saving organs!

Mickey Mantle.