So what’s moral then? Who can you, morally, bump down the list so this girl can get in line for a transplant that might not even work (she’s small enough that adult lungs aren’t really a good match)? Knowing that it might be months before another suitable donor appeared, if your younger, say 18-yo, brother was next in line, with 2 weeks to live, and they kicked him down the list for this girl, would you still think it was the right thing? Would you let her in if it was your middle-aged mother?
Should we always “make room” for whoever has the best sob-story? Transplants are a real difficult situation, because the case can be made on both sides. If the choice was this girl, or some criminal or some political figure (but I repeat myself), it would be one thing. But we’re talking here about other ordinary people, members of someone else’s family, who are also waiting for that donated organ. Can you really say this girl deserves it more than they? On what grounds? That’s why in situations like this, it’s better to stick strictly to the medical suitability, because no one is really qualified to say morally who “deserves” to get the transplant more.
And what’s worse, this isn’t a surgeon we’re talking about making this decision. It’s a bureaucrat. As I noted in my original comment, the *last* thing anyone should want is for some paper-pusher to make arbitrary decisions on life-or-death procedures, based on either emotional appeals or abstract numbers like productivity (or campaign donations or political affiliation or any other non-medical criteria).
>> Can you really say this girl deserves it more than they? On what grounds?
That was enough to reiterate your deeply lifeless point.
Clinical mediocrity is the driving precept of socialized medicine. You describe it well.
As an alternative to the austere conjecture, how about providing some hard data that complements the potential of a free healthcare market.