Checklist: passport, plane ticket, organ transplant.
Recently, active and proposed US medical insurance programs are taking steps to address the problems of organ availability, long waiting times, and high medical and surgical costs by promoting transplant tourism. Such programs are created explicitly to encourage policy holders to travel to a foreign country for the purpose of obtaining a transplant. Some medical insurance programs have gone as far as to bundle exotic travel and healthcare-transplantation not excluded-into one package. This article details some of the safety and ethics issues with these programs.
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Department of Bioethics, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio 44195, USA. txbioethics@yahoo.com
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D001359:Aviation; D006801:Humans; D007341:Insurance; D007348:Insurance, Health; D016377:Organ Transplantation / Q000191:economics / Q000941:ethics*; D014195:Travel; D014481:United States