Organs donated by American patients may be going to individuals from other countries who pay a lot of money solely to come to the U.S. for a transplant.
According to the story co-published by ProPublica and WVUE-TV in New Orleans, 252 foreigners came to the U.S. to receive liver transplants between 2013 and 2016. The majority of them in 2016 were from Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Kuwait. In the same year, more than 2,600 patients were removed from transplant waiting lists because they had died or became too ill to receive a new liver. More than 14,000 people, almost all American citizens, are currently waiting for a liver, with a median wait time of more than 14 months.
The practice is legal, the story said, and foreign nationals are required to wait for an available organ the same as American patients. The foreign transplants were concentrated among a handful of well-known hospitals. From 2013 to 2016, Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center Center in Houston performed 31 liver transplants for foreign visitors, Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans performed 30, Cleveland Clinic performed 21 and New York-Presbyterian Hospital performed 20.
“If you live in the United States, no matter what your [citizenship] status is, you could potentially be an organ donor if you get hit by a car or something happens to you,” said Gabriel Danovitch, MD, medical director of the kidney and pancreas transplant program at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. “But if your home is somewhere else, a long way away, there’s no way that you can be a donor or your family or your friends could be donors. And in some respects, when you then come to the United States, you are using up a valuable resource that is in great shortage here.”
Some of those aforementioned hospitals, like the Cleveland Clinic, said they don’t actively seek out foreigners in need of transplants.
Money may be a factor, however, as foreign patients aren’t entitled to the same discounts on transplant procedures as Medicare or privately insured patients. The chargemaster rate for a liver transplant at New York-Presbyterian in 2015 was more than $371,000, according to the story, while the average Medicare payment for it was around $112,000.
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John joined TriMed in 2016, focusing on healthcare policy and regulation. After graduating from Columbia College Chicago, he worked at FM News Chicago and Rivet News Radio, and worked on the state government and politics beat for the Illinois Radio Network. Outside of work, you may find him adding to his never-ending graphic novel collection.