NPR.

Kurt Sweat remembers one of the first times he watched a surgeon remove the heart from a deceased patient.

I'm very queasy with blood, and there's obviously a lot of blood.

There's obviously a very bad stench in the operating room, things like that that kind of you don't

expect. It was 2021 and at the time Kurt was a grad student at Stanford studying economics,

although most of the people in the operating room did not know that.

Someone mentioned I'm a student and they assume I'm a med student or something.

I remember they asked me to tie knots on the gown.

And I don't know how to do that.

So, you know, I was just like, you know, I'm the wrong kind of student.

Afterwards, Kurt tagged along with the transplant team as they transported the heart

from this operating room in New Mexico to an OR in California.

There, another patient was waiting.

Knowing that this person's heart was going to a young boy at the pediatric hospital at

Stanford.

I mean, it was just, it was just amazing.

It's been a few years since Kurt first witnessed how organ donation can save a life.

And the experience stuck with him because in his own nerdy, econ brain way, Kurt wants to help save lives too.

This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma. And I'm Waylon Wong. Today in the show,

Kurt and his colleague Alex Chan get into the economics of organ donation. And they argue why the

government should financially compensate donors and their families.

Whenever you have a demand for something and a limited supply, you've got a market.

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