"This would not work for people of certain religions who must take their entire body to the grave. You would be discriminating against them. That's not a fair go."

"Well, I have to agree to disagree with you on this point.

The State pays for and regulates just about every aspect of our bodies from the day we are born to the day we die.

If you want to keep your organs and feed them to the worms or send them up a chimney as even more carbon emissions, that should be your option, but if you don't have an option, your arse should belong to the State .... they paid enough for it!"

"I totally agree with swapping the system from the opt-in to the opt-out system. It works exactly the same, those who want to donate can, those who don't simply don't, while those in the middle who don't seem to cared either way opt to donate by default. If there are concerns about religions and donations and people being ignorant to opting-out then simple exceptions can be made to auto-opt out for a list of provided religions unless the person manually opts-in.

By increasing the number of donations the Australian health system would be dramatically impacted, with the waiting lists slashed, patients stuck on dialysis able to return to normal lives and hundreds of lives saved every year. This not only impacts the individuals, cuts the health care costs but also frees up hospital beds, staff and equipment to other needy patients. The other often over looked impact is the ability for those "saved" patients to return to work and contribute to the community.

An alternative or concurrent system that could be employed to the above proposal could be to run a financial incentive program. If you donate organs your family gets $X towards funeral expenses or you get a payment when you opt-in regardless of whether you donate organs in the end or not.

A similar incentive system could be used for blood donation, which is always an issue. Rather than the red cross paying out money, the government could treat the donation as a tax deduction. Provide a receipt of up to a set number of units at the end of the year for a tax deduction to encourage donations and a reward every year. A cap on units would exist to stop people donating more than the safe limit.
"

"This is a double-edged scalpel ... you'd sure squeal if the government STOPPED meddling in your health affairs by denying health care to smokers or drinkers, fat people or those who hadn't agreed to donate their organs. You can't have it both ways. No body is stealing anything ... only one in a couple of hundred people expire under the right conditions anyway ... it's just ensuring that people don't steal from the system that kept them healthy and let their organs rot for no valid reason. "