Biden’s HHS May Plan to Prioritize Organ Transplants by Race, Legal Group Warns, Launches Inquiry

The America First Legal Foundation (AFL) has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to investigate what it suspects to be a forthcoming “racist overhaul” of the nation’s organ transplant system. This comes amid the Biden administration’s efforts to promote racial equity across government agencies.

AFL’s request seeks all records relating to organ transplantation from HHS, including mentions of race, ethnicity, discrimination, and other such terms, charging that the Biden administration plans to make race a factor in prioritizing organ transplant recipients.

The document filed by AFL notes that President Biden signed a new Executive Order on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, instructing federal agencies to establish “equity-focused” leadership teams to “prevent and remedy discrimination, including by protecting the public from algorithmic discrimination.” HHS, which oversees the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), was one of the many agencies identified in the directive.

AFL claims that recent HHS efforts to “racialize” health policy, combined with the executive order, suggest that the Biden administration plans to “unlawfully alter” the OPTN to allocate organs based on the race of the recipient rather than medical need.

In December 2021, the HHS Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a request for information seeking public comments on “potential changes to the requirements that transplant programs, organ procurement organizations, and end-stage renal disease facilities must meet” to participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs. One issue CMS sought input on was how to increase equity in organ transplantation.

HRSA has modified how it reports data on organ transplants by creating new categories of racial identifiers for patients, and also launched a new “Modernization Initiative” last month to “strengthen accountability, equity, and performance” in the organ donation and transplantation system.

AFL claims that the Biden administration’s obsession with dividing Americans based on their race may lead to donated organs being allocated based on the race of the recipient instead of medical criteria as Congress requires, posing a danger.

The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 created the OPTN and directed it to establish a national list of people who need organ transplants.