Tax Breaks For Organ Donors Aren't Boosting Transplant Supply

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A kidney donor is wheeled to an operating room for a transplant at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in late June.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP/Getty Images

Seventeen states offer tax incentives to people who donate a kidney, a portion of their liver or bone marrow for transplantation. But a study finds these sweeteners aren't working.

Researchers looked at what happened in the years before and after these tax incentives were passed and found no increase in organ donation rates.

It's the latest contribution to a debate about how to increase the supply of organs for transplantation at a time when more than 100,000 people are on waiting lists and donations have been flat for several years.

A recent NPR-Thomson Reuters Health Poll found that 60 percent of Americans support some kind of financial incentive to organ donors that could be applied to health care needs.

But the new report raises a caution about how much to expect from financial incentives.

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