Federal insurers should not reimburse patients seeking organ transplant surgery in China, the commission said in its new report.
A congressional committee has offered several recommendations to the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government on how to end the Chinese regime’s horrific practice of forced organ harvesting, with measures that would discourage Americans from traveling to China for organ transplantation.
The bicameral Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) released its 2024 annual report on human rights conditions in China on Dec. 20. The report, which is more than 300 pages long, documented China’s “massive failures to comply with international human rights standards,” said the commission chair and co-chair, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Sen. Jeffrey Merkley (D-Ore.), respectively.
A section of the report’s recommendations focuses on addressing China’s forced organ harvesting practices. It suggests that the presidential administration implement regulations to prevent federal insurers from covering the costs of organ transplants performed in China, as well as post-transplant care, including immunosuppressant medications, for patients who undergo surgery in China.
For more than a decade, China has been a top destination for medical tourists who seek organ transplants, as Chinese hospitals have consistently offered short waiting times for matching organs—significantly shorter than in developed nations with public organ donation programs. Prisoners of conscience in China are being used as a living organ bank and are killed on demand for their organs.
Some state governments have taken action to combat China’s state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting. Beginning in June 2023, Texas, Utah, and Idaho have enacted laws to prevent insurance companies from covering transplant surgeries if the organs originate from China.
The commission also suggested that the executive branch investigate whether federal money has been provided to Chinese entities engaged in unethical organ transplantation practices.
Additionally, the executive branch should also deny U.S. visas to Chinese physicians and researchers who are connected to forced organ harvesting before 2015.
The State Department should also use its whistleblower rewards program to gather credible evidence to hold perpetrators of the Chinese regime’s forced organ harvesting accountable and to “deter and disrupt the market for illegally procured organs,” according to the report.
In May, Smith and other CECC commissioners sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting funds be set aside, saying there “is a pressing need to uncover first-hand information from those who witnessed or engaged” in China’s forced organ harvesting.
The commission also urged the presidential administration to build a coalition of partners at the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate concerns on the issue raised by U.N. human rights experts and independent tribunals.
In June 2021, a dozen human rights experts affiliated with the United Nations said they were “extremely alarmed by reports of alleged ‘organ harvesting’ targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians, in detention in China.”
In 2019, the independent China Tribunal in London concluded that the Chinese regime had been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for years “on a substantial scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners being the “principal source” of human organs.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that encourages its practitioners to live by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. By the late 1990s, the practice had become enormously popular in China, with at least 70 million people having taken it up, according to official estimates at the time.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which viewed Falun Gong’s popularity as a threat to its political power, launched a brutal persecution campaign in 1999 with the aim of eradicating the practice. Since then, millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated and untold numbers killed, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
The commission reiterated its call from last year’s report, saying that Congress should pass the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023. The House passed its version of the legislation in March last year.
If enacted, it would sanction anyone involved in forced organ harvesting and require the government to report annually on such activities in foreign countries.