Drive for Five: Sensible

It’s the day before the election. Respected sources have informed your scribe a sobering reality. Law enforcement, at all levels of governance, are on high alert. America is on edge. The world will certainly be watching.

Who we elect as leaders plays a big role. Politics has become quite messy. Maybe it always has been this way. At 66-years-old your scribe, blessed to receive a gift of new life through a total stranger sharing her spare kidney, can recall the turbulent 60’s. There was racial tension in Kansas City back then. It made the evening news many times. For a sports-crazy kid? I learned while waiting through the news and weather stuff before sports. I have not forgotten.

Turbulent times then, plenty through following decades to, here we sit now. Law enforcement on high alert with great concerns, regardless of presidential winner, there is gonna be trouble in America. We’re bracing for it.

Who we elect to represent our values? The cranium shifts into overdrive thinking about the, nearing two-year, journey with kidney disease, dialysis and eventually Cathie Hitchcock’s spare resting below my belt line. The brain then zips to "Drive for Five" 's efforts in supporting the End Kidney Deaths Act. It would modify a 40-year law regulating organ donation.

The modification would provide a $50.000 tax credit, dispensed over five years, to Americans willing to share their spare - like Hitchcock - and saving somebody’s life. We need more live organ donors. Too many are dying on transplant lists. Especially in the kidney world where 93,000 languish. We have less than 30,000 transplants a year. Do the math. Lots of folks are suffering on lists. Tragically, they’re also dying on those lists.

This election is about more than Harris/Walz and Trump/Vance. It’s about Congressional House harangues and Senate showdowns. These are the folks who have the End Kidney Deaths Act before them. Led by superstar Elaine Perlman, there’s many individuals, groups and organizations, including DFF endorsing this sensible tweak to existing law sponsored long ago by a young and handsome Tennessee legislator named Al Gore. It was good then but times have changed, modern medicine has improved and there’s a real need in America to strike back at our growing kidney crisis. Here's more on EKDA: https://www.modifynota.org/join-our-team .

When speaking to groups or individuals, I joke frequently, “If you play the market, invest in the renal care business. It’s good and gonna get better.” What’s the ol’ saying, “If you can’t cry about it? Might as well laugh about it.” I dunno. You get the point.

Perlman is quite pervasive. The former Columbia University professor and high school educator has a favorite phase that is pertinent considering it’s election time and we’re deciding who to lead our nation forward. “What lawmaker wouldn’t like a bill projected to save 100,000 lives and taxpayers $37-billion over the decade of the pilot? Who would be against that? It makes no sense.”

Sister, amen and amen.

It doesn’t make sense. But what about America today really does make much sense? What to do? That’s the million-dollar question. I’m just a simple dude from Missouri marinating in the blessings and curveballs of life and trying to work with others to make the world a little better today and tomorrow than yesterday.

Whomever wins the political battles at the local, county, state and federal level, may they truly have the best interests of their constituents in mind when making decisions. Realizing those decisions will greatly effect the lives of those they represent.

America has a kidney disease issue that is projected to increase dramatically. Respected sources say 550,000 folks are currently on dialysis. That number’s expected to zoom to a million in the next decade. Excessive weight. High blood pressure and Diabetes. A terrible trio of kidney killers.

This challenge is two-fold. We don’t have enough donors and we have too many, because of unhealthy lifestyles, falling into kidney disease. Again, the renal care world says thanks.

America votes. Pray for peace and for whomever’s elected to make sensible choices including saving lives and taxpayer money. Insist they support the sensible End Kidney Deaths Act.