Dozens of lawmakers call for liver ‘redistricting’ plan

A debate over liver donations is gaining steam in Congress, with lawmakers in states with organ shortages along the coasts sparring with those representing the donor-rich heartland.

Dozens of lawmakers from the Northeast and West Coast signed a letter Thursday urging the federal government to redraw the map that governs its collection and distribution of livers.

Currently, livers are only given to recipients who live in the same geographic region as the donor. That means that states with higher mortality rates, like those in the South and Midwest, have larger supplies of livers but typically lower demand for donations.

Rep. Elliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that the redistricting plan recently floated by the United Network for Organ Sharing, the government-contracted group that oversees liver donations, which help create a fairer system.

“By rationalizing the system of distributing organs for transplantation, we can assure that they are allocated to patients in the most urgent need,” Engel and 73 other lawmakers wrote in the letter to the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Redrawing the geographic zones would save 500 lives over the next five years as well as $246 million in transportation costs because livers no longer need to travel as far to reach a recipient, according to the organ sharing network. 

The letter is also signed by New York-based hospitals and healthcare providers, who warn they are “gravely disadvantaged” by the shortage of livers.

But the idea has drawn sharp criticism from donor-rich states that worry they will become “organ farms” for their coastal counterparts.

More than 50 lawmakers in states like Texas, Tennessee and Mississippi signed a letter earlier this fall condemning the plan.

Rep. Kevin Yoder, (R-Kan.), who spearheaded the effort, warned that the government should not “punish successful programs and decrease access to organs where donation rates are highest.”

Instead, he said, officials should increase donations in areas of the country “where disparities in wait times are the greatest.”