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It should shock no one that in the matter of access to health care, even to the organs in other people’s bodies, the wealthy and well-connected, such as Ottawa Senators’ owner Eugene Melnyk, are different from the rest of us.

“The rich do better,” Dr. Arthur Caplan, head of bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, told the Star. “I don’t know that that’s a headline, but it’s nonetheless true.”

Caplan co-wrote an article on Forbes.com last week that said publicity campaigns for donor organs, such as that successfully mounted by Melnyk for a liver, create “a double standard” under which those with name recognition have an advantage over those with fewer resources and less profile.

After a plea last week by the Senators on Melnyk’s behalf, more than 500 potential donors volunteered. Doctors with the University Health Network’s multi-organ transplant team selected one from 12 potential candidates and a plea last week this week on the 55-year-old Melnyk

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David Crosby was the recipient of a highly publicized liver transplant in 1994, which was paid for by Phil Collins

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For every dangerous task, there is probably some price at which society would feel that people are being adequately compensated for the risk of performing that task. This is the case for security contractors in Iraq and surrogate mothers. Why should donating a kidney be any different?

There is some “price for a kidney” that would eliminate the waiting list, feel like a fair price, and also save Medicare lots of money. That price might be higher than what the “market price” of a kidney would be. Economists Gary Becker and Julio Elias estimate that the price of a kidney in a free market would be $15,000. It’s possible that would feel like an unfair price. Some onlinecommentators have suggested around $50,000 as a price that they consider fair.

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Before I got home he had left a message telling me that he would have to rethink his suggestion as the cost would be over $280 per month plus tax