ABSTRACT
Economists are among the least likely to object to being concerned about resource costs in health care. The Task Force obviously accepted most of the cost-cutting dogma, and the rituals—such as rate limitation and determination of need—which often accompany it. In this chapter, the author shows that the Task Force probably overstates the current marginal resource cost of transplants, and surely overstates the cost that could be achieved after additional research and after an increase in the volume of transplants. He offers some brief comments on some other aspects of the Task Force Report. The Task Force seems to have the idea that it can pressure hospitals to squeeze out alleged inefficiency through the mechanism of allowing them to obtain resources for transplants only by limiting these hospitals' budgets. The author argues that the Task Force, in accepting only the "cost" part of cost-benefit analysis, has been led to make recommendations which have some serious problems.
