The Private Insurer Response to Advanced Health Care Technology The Case of Organ Transplants

Abstract

With advances in medical skill and technology inevitably accompanied by a blur of media attention, organ transplants are increasingly regarded as accepted therapeutic interventions for a variety of degenerative diseases. Although the number of the nation’s transplant operations remains relatively small, enough are being performed, and long waiting lists indicate considerably more could be performed, to warrant classification of many as therapeutic and no longer experimental. For insurers and all health-care consumers, the critical question here is: Who will pay?