The main concern of Mehta et al, and Vitale et al, is that we might have over-estimated the waitlist life expectancy of patients with HCC who have low MELD scores. This concern, which is addressed below, does not change any of the conclusions of the study because patients with low MELD scores, with or without HCC, have such a low transplant-related survival benefit that they should not be transplanted anyway. The main message of the paper was that transplant-related survival benefit increases dramatically with MELD score and that at high MELD scores patients with HCC have similar transplant-related survival benefit as patients without HCC who have the same MELD score.