Opinion: The high out-of-pocket cost of donating a kidney
New York state recently passed a law reimbursing kidney donors. The federal government should follow suit.
“All of your medical and surgical expenses will be paid by your recipient’s insurance,” the nurse coordinator at the Mayo Clinic told me. Naïve, I nodded into the phone at this reassurance. I had already worked with her to have several vials of my blood shipped from my home in Kansas City to Mayo in Rochester, Minnesota, all at no cost to me. Now she was calling to tell me the astounding news: Tests on that blood had revealed I was a perfect match for Deb Porter Gill, a kidney patient I had read about in the newspaper two months before.
“But insurance will not pay for your travel or other non-medical expenses,” the nurse coordinator continued. “There are some sources of assistance we can discuss, but if you don’t qualify, you will have to pay for those yourself.”
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