Background:

The Living Donor Support Act is currently being considered by the New York State Assembly, and even though it has universal support, it might not be brought to the floor for a vote. If (and only if) you’re a New Yorker, emailing your assembly-member now can encourage them to vote on the bill before the assembly session closes this Thursday.
The bill would reimburse kidney donors for non-medical costs associated with surgery such as wage reimbursement — the median costs are as high as $4,000. There is good reason to believe that removing this disincentive would cause a non-trivial increase in kidney donations (see this study, esp. Table 2). If it increases living donations in New York by 20% (which is what a similar policy accomplished in New Zealand), that would mean over 100 additional donations per year. See here for a detailed breakdown of the benefits of receiving a kidney for the recipient (though some of the figures are a bit out of date, living donor transplants probably last longer now).
In addition to being directly good for the world, this policy change would be a great win for the effective altruism community — Waitlist Zero, which is supported by Open Philanthropy, has led the advocacy for this bill, and others in the EA community helped it pass the NY Senate.

Call to action:

Find your assembly-member here
Click “Visit Assembly-member’s Page”
Click “Contact”
Send them an edited version of this email, the more personalized the better but even something very formulaic is helpful.
- If you want to go above and beyond, you can also call your assembly-member — this is even better than emailing. The email template provides all the background you need for a phone call.

abier1 Jun 2022 1:33 UTC

75 points

What links here?