Organ Transplant Repo Men

In the shadowy world of the underground international human organ trade, once a sale is made, it's final. But in the legitimate trade in the US organ transplant surgery isn't always the end of the story. With many private-for-profit organ transplant centers opening in the United States in anticipation of Obamacare, the numbers of defaults on payment plans entered into by patients lacking adequate insurance coverage has risen dramatically from a low of 734 lawsuits filed against patients in 2007 to a new high of 3,788 in 2012, with most of the defaulting patients fling for bankruptcy protection. When a patient's debt is sold to a medical-default collection agency the patient is usually subjected to the usual barrage of phone calls and dunning letters familiar to those with unpaid credit-card debt.

But some collection agencies have been resorting to more aggressive tactics: organ transplant Repo Men - literally, doctors and a surgical team who arrive in a fully-equipped mobile surgical unit unannounced at the defaulter's home and, using threatening gestures, facial expressions and waving around piles of printed documents they claim to be court orders, they force the debtor into the surgical unit and repossess the subject unpaid-for organ.

"We are doing a real public service here," says Gene Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald Medical Services of Paramus, New Jersey. "If some guy has a liver he hasn't paid for, we can retrieve it and get it into a more deserving and responsible recipient."

When asked whether repossesing transplanted organs is a postive for the affected patients, Fitzgerald replied "It's good for all concerned - society, the economy, everyone gets a benefit from responsible payment of debts."

A class-action lawsuit againt members of the American Medical Repossession Agencies Association has been filed in Federal Washington DC and another is expected to be filed next month in California, which has seen the highest rate of transplant default lawsuits - 55% of all such cases in the US. Trial is scheduled to begin next summer on both cases.

- MedLawNewsWeb, July 2013