“…In her home country, she would have faced a lengthy wait.
Not in the US, one of the few countries in which “transplant tourism” is legal.
For the team performing the procedure, it was worth it. The patient not only paid for the procedure, the average cost of which is $1.9 million, out of pocket, but her husband’s charity also made a large contribution to the foundation of the surgeon’s wife.
(…)
The Times analyzed every transplant performed in the US over the past dozen years and found that “patients who traveled from other countries received transplants faster than patients from America and were less likely to die waiting for an organ.”
Or, to put it more bluntly, the combination of foreign wealth (regardless of its source) and the “entrepreneurialism” of American hospitals determines who lives and dies…”