House Republicans are investigating two major hospital systems after recent reports that they have prioritized organ transplants for wealthy foreign recipients, jumping the wait list lines to receive a donated organ.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) launched an investigation into the University of Chicago Medical Center and the Montefiore Medical Center in New York following reports last month that they manipulated systems to bypass the transplant waiting list to profit from performing organ transplants on wealthy foreign patients who were able to pay out of pocket.
A handful of hospitals across the country are increasingly catering to overseas patients, who will pay significantly more than U.S. patients paying through private insurance or Medicare, according to a December 2025 New York Times report.
International patients paying without insurance can bring in as much as $2 million for a complex organ transplant, such as for hearts and lungs, the only types of transplants that are allowed to skip the waitlist after passing a minimal ethics check from a review board.
At Montefiore Medical Center, 20% of lung transplants were for foreign patients. Overseas patients account for 16% of lung transplant patients at UC San Diego Health and 11% at the University of Chicago.
For example, Kayoko Hira, the wife of the head of Japan’s largest hotel chain, was able to obtain a heart transplant from the University of Chicago Medical Center within three days of arriving in the United States in 2021. Out-of-pocket costs for heart transplants average $1.9 million.
Smith and the oversight subcommittee chairman, Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), said in their letters to the chief executives of Montefiore and the University of Chicago that the more than 103,000 U.S. residents on the organ transplant list ought to have first priority, not foreign nationals.
On average, 13 Americans die each day waiting for an organ transplant.
“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 new investigation into what the committee has dubbed “transplant tourism” comes as Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services have exerted more scrutiny over the various organ procurement organizations that coordinate organ retrievals and transplants across the country.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2024 began investigating the OPO for Kentucky after reports that a patient almost had his organs retrieved for donation after showing signs of life on the operating table.
Smith and Schweikert also launched an investigation into the OPO for New Jersey in November 2025 after receiving whistleblower reports that patients’ families were being pressured to choose to donate their loved ones’ organs and other serious medical ethics violations.
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Smith noted that failure to answer the committee’s questions by the Feb. 10 deadline will result in the issuance of subpoenas.
“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,” Smith said.
