More than 100,000 Americans remain on transplant waiting lists while wealthy foreigners are allegedly allowed to skip the line.
By Catholics for Catholics
A congressional probe is investigating two major hospitals being accused of favoring rich foreign patients to bypass U.S. citizens waiting for an organ transplant, as thousands of Americans die each year waiting for an operation.
According to a story by Fox News, House lawmakers Reps. Jason Smith, R-Mo., and David Schweikert, R-Ariz., who lead the House Ways and Means Committee’s oversight effort, sent letters Tuesday to the University of Chicago Medical Center and Montefiore Medical Center in New York, insisting for records by Feb. 10 and threatening that they will issue subpoenas if the hospitals fail to provide them.
The New York Times first reported that allegations assert that the tax-exempt medical facilities transplanted organs obtained from American donors into foreign nationals who went to the U.S. exclusively to receive transplants, essentially jumping ahead of U.S. patients. Smith and Schweikert said the alleged actions probably sidestepped Americans on transplant waiting lists, potentially resulting in loss of life.
The alleged actions by the hospitals go against everything that tax-exempt medical facilities are supposed to do, Smith said. All of this could end up in a review of whether those institutions should continue to receive those benefits.
“If U.S. hospitals who enjoy lucrative taxpayer-funded benefits have prioritized foreign nationals for organ transplants over saving American lives, they should have their tax-exempt status terminated,” Smith said. “America First means prioritizing American lives, not your bottom line. The Ways and Means Committee will leave no stone unturned and is prepared to utilize every tool at our disposal, including subpoenas, in pursuit of the truth.”
The lawmakers said they sent a letter to Thomas Jackiewicz, president of the University of Chicago Medical Center, in which they told him they were mainly startled by the hospital’s transplant figures. About 11% of the hospital’s heart and lung transplant recipients were made up of foreigners, with 61 international patients receiving organs between 2020 and 2024 — more than at any other hospital in the U.S.
Lawmakers also cited cases in which foreign patients allegedly received organs within days, while American patients waited far longer.
