Surgical instruments and supplies lie on a table during a kidney transplant surgery in 2016 at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington. (Molly Riley/AP)

I concur with the March 28 editorial “Break up the human organ monopoly,” but there are other measures needed to address the organ donation shortage.

I was surprised to discover that one company has had the organ transplant contract since its inception almost 40 years ago. As the editorial suggested, we need an organ FedEx-type supply system, which could reduce the number of needless deaths. Each day, 22 people die in want of organs, which should dishearten all Americans. The government can do its part by dividing the contract to attract competition.

Many Americans want to “give back” to the community but do not know how. Becoming an organ donor can give a fellow American the gift of life.

The government can also make a difference with a campaign to attract more living donors. Data confirm that living organ transplants have a very low probability of severe complications.

This subject is important to me because of my personal journey with organ transplants. Within the past six months, I donated a kidney through the George Washington transplant center to a police officer from Prince George’s County whom I did not know. I wanted to thank the police, who have the most difficult job in America. It was a major operation, but for me, I have not felt any effects from the operation besides the need to drink more water, which I should do anyway. In fact, and do not tell my doctors, but within a month, I was rowing on the Potomac on a beautiful fall day.

Peter D. Ford, Arlington

Organ donation is one of the most remarkable medical breakthroughs of the 20th century, and it attests to the generous sacrifices of organ donors and their families who provide their friends, neighbors and even strangers a second chance at life. But up until last week, the odds were against those living in the Midwest to receive a lifesaving liver.

For years, we raised the alarm about the nation’s fundamentally unfair organ transplant system, its contractor and the inherent bias of the most recent liver transplant rule. Our warnings were heeded when The Post broke the news that Health and Human Services Department acknowledged its intent to overhaul the organ transplant system and divide up the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) contract to hopefully end United Network for Organ Sharing’s (UNOS) suffocating grip on the organ donation system.

Our initial distrust of UNOS, the contractor that runs the transplantation network, began when it changed the liver allocation policy by adjusting the geographic parameters guiding which patients receive donated organs. This decision disregarded expert opinion and meant that states with high rates of donation — mostly in the Midwest and the South — had to ship their organs to states with low rates of organ donation, which is made up of mostly urban coastal areas.

Internal communications from UNOS released in 2021 demonstrated that UNOS colluded against certain regions when it issued the new liver allocation policy. The policy process was designed to deliberately deny patients in certain parts of the country their fair chance at a lifesaving liver transplant.

Breaking up the OPTN contract and adding transparency to the process are good first steps to rectify the fundamental bias in the system dominated by a monopolistic contractor. Getting the organ transplant and donation system right is a matter of life and death. There is no room for bias, reckless mistakes or an opaque process. It is important to continue oversight and make certain the organ donation process is transparent and fair so that more organs can be donated and more lives saved.

Jerry Moran, Washington

The writer, a Republican who represents Kansas in the U.S. Senate, is a member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human hervices, education, and related agencies.

Roy Blunt, Washington

The writer, a Republican, represented Missouri in the U.S. Senate from 2011 to 2023, and was a member of the Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services, education, and related agencies.

Many thanks to The Post for highlighting the distressing policies on liver transplants across America. The new rules by United Network for Organ Sharing add fuel to the fire of many rural Americans’ belief that coastal elites are governing the country at the expense of the Midwest and the South. The article demonstrated what family and friends of waiting patients have seen for years now: The coasts are harvesting organs from less populated areas. Talk about a recipe for political cynicism!

I have watched the agonizing decline of a friend of nearly 70 years as she sought a transplant. Trying to hit the sweet spot of being sick enough to need the transplant but well enough to tolerate the surgery is a crapshoot worthy of regulation by the gambling authorities. Even though her personal stats would seemingly make her a prime recipient, she has one unfortunate demographic: She lives in a Plains state. Tough luck. The livers are going elsewhere.

Getting clear answers to how many precious livers have been destroyed in the long transits required by UNOS’s new policy obviously has been a problem. We don’t know.

I hope the series drives Congress to push harder on these problems.

Tonda F. Rush, Mitchellville

There are numerous complicated factors when matching donated organs with a waiting recipient. Some are medical, some institutional and some systematic as the March 23 front-page article “Organ network in line for overhaul” detailed. However, nothing matters more than having a pool of donated healthy organs to be considered by those expertly trained to do so. Let your loved ones know of your intentions for contribution.

Kathy DeVito Cohen, Rockville

The writer is a kidney and pancreas recipient and the child of an eye donor.