The House Ways and Means Oversight subcommittee held a hearing on December 2 as part of its investigation into the questionable activities of organ procurement organizations (OPOs), the tax-exempt, federally designated monopolies involved in the recovery of organs for transplant.
The investigation “revealed troubling clinical practices, misuse of taxpayer dollars, and questionable financial practices,” a December 4 Ways and Means Committee news release stated.
“In addition to life-threatening failures, investigations have unveiled instances of waste, fraud, and abuse by OPOs across the country.”
The investigation found “instances of OPOs overbilling Medicare for costs that do not qualify for reimbursement, such as executive compensation, lobbying, meals, and entertainment,” the release stated. “Federal investigations have uncovered evidence of certain OPOs interfering with the determination of death for organ donors, even though hospitals hold that responsibility.”
Targeting Living Patients
Individuals testifying at the hearing provided greater detail about the more egregious practices alleged and the consequences these actions have had for patients and their families.
These included organs being harvested for research that was never performed, organs being taken from deceased prisoners in Alabama without consent, and a poorly screened, cancerous liver being transplanted to a patient, leading to her death.
Shocking revelations from the hearing covered coercive tactics used to gain consent from patient families, and questionable clinical practices used to recover organs from living patients who exhibited signs of consciousness or had a reasonable hope of recovery.
“Taxpayer-funded OPOs operate with virtually no accountability, and OPOs have pressured grieving families and, in the most horrifying cases, targeted patients who aren’t even dead,” Jennifer Erickson, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, told the subcommittee.
“Whistleblowers have shared they’ve been trained to target inexperienced physicians, especially in rural America, … in an effort to destabilize patients through the over-administering of comfort meds such as fentanyl,” said Erickson.
Whistleblower Testifies
Nyckoletta Martin, a whistleblower and former organ preservationist for Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, an OPO, testified, “From my firsthand experience, it appeared that my former employer was exploiting a regulatory loophole to advance its metrics and increase Medicare reimbursements at the expense of organ donors and their families, who I believed were being misled and taken advantage of.”
Martin related the case of T. J. Hoover, a patient she described as being unresponsive for several days after being brought to a hospital in cardiac arrest, who regained consciousness during a cardiac catheterization procedure.
“Immediately upon waking,” said Martin, “[Hoover] was paralyzed and sedated.”
In more detailed accounts of the incident reported elsewhere, Martin indicated more explicitly that the intent was to harvest Hoover’s organs despite signs he was still alive.
Health Care News has reported in recent years on similar incidents of aggressive organ harvesting practices, including claims that a North Carolina hospital let a college athlete die in order to harvest his organs.
Conflict: Recovery or Rehabilitation
Even organ procurement incidents that are less openly biased against the patient can be just as life-threatening, says Jane Orient, M.D., the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
“Once an organ donor is identified, treatment goals may shift to organ preservation instead of aggressive neurologic rehabilitation,” said Orient. “Some practices, such as anticoagulation, might harm the patient,” said Orient. “Protocols for declaring brain death may not be followed rigorously, such as repeated evaluation when [the] patient is off sedating drugs.”
The goals of OPOs and patients are not always aligned, said Orient.
“No one with an interest in obtaining an organ should be influencing determination of death,” said Orient.
Defining Death
Heidi Klessig, M.D., a retired anesthesiologist and author of The Brain Death Fallacy, says the current definitions for death used in the organ procurement process endanger patients.
“‘Brain dead’ donors are not dead: they are neurologically injured and have only been redefined as being dead for the sake of procuring their valuable, viable organs,” said Klessig.
The brain-death standard allows physicians to end the lives of patients who could survive, says Klessig. “‘Circulatory death’ organ donors have their organs procured during a timeframe when resuscitation is still possible, meaning that they are not known to be dead,” said Klessig.
“Obtaining organs from these still-living people is ultimately a concealed form of physician-assisted death,” said Klessig. “People deserve full transparency about these facts before they register to become organ donors.”
Daniel Nuccio, Ph.D., ([email protected]) is a spring 2026 College Fix journalism fellow, reporter, and editorial associate for Health Care News.
