Some U.S. hospitals are giving organs donated domestically to patients flying in from other countries who are willing to pay a premium for transplants, according to a new investigation by Propublica and Lee Zurik of WVUE New Orleans.
The practice—which is legal and requires foreign nationals to wait their turn for an organ in the same way as domestic patients—is little known to the public, or even to sick patients and their families.
The foreign transplants are concentrated among a handful of transplant centers, including New York-Presbyterian, Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston (31 between 2013 to 2016), Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans (30), and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio (21).
Between 2013 and 2016, 252 foreigners came to the U.S. purely to receive livers at American hospitals. All the while, more than 14,000 people—nearly all of them American citizens—are waiting for liver transplants.
The practice often is justified on medical and humanitarian grounds, with some hospitals even seeking out foreign patients in need of a transplant.
Ansaq Medical Co., a Saudi Arabian company whose stated aim is to “facilitate the procedures and mechanisms of ‘medical tourism,’” says it signed an agreement with New Orleans-based Ochsner Medical Center in 2015. The hospital, in a statement, says it does not actively seek foreign patients. Rather, patients seek out “Ochsner’s expertise because of our relentless commitment to provide the highest-quality, complex care.”
Perhaps, but with President Donald Trump not only espousing an “America First” policy but also seeking to ban visitors and refugees from certain countries, allocating domestic organs to foreigners seemingly runs counter to the national mood.
And more broadly beyond health care, some are questioning whether foreigners should be able to access limited spots that might otherwise be available to U.S. citizens.
“As a general rule, you’ve got to take care of Americans first as long as you have more demand than supply,” says Sen. John Kennedy, who favors curbing transplants for foreigners, while creating a national board that could make exceptions. “But what you don’t want to get into, it seems to me, is subjective areas like, ‘If this person could live an extra few years, what could they contribute to society?’”
