‘We were really sending a message to say, Arizona’s not going to take part in this in any way, shape or form,’ state Rep. Leo Biasiucci said.
The Arizona House on Feb. 20 passed a bill aimed at taking a stance against Beijing’s systematic forced organ harvesting crimes. The bill now advances to the state Senate.
The three page
bill, titled “Arizona End Organ Harvesting Act,” intends to limit health insurance coverage on organ transplant operations if the surgeries take place in the Chinese mainland or Hong Kong, or if an organ originated from jurisdictions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The bill allows insurance providers, including subscription contracts, health care services organizations, disability insurers, and the state’s Medicaid agency to limit or deny coverage for a patient who chooses to receive an organ transplant from China.
“We were really sending a message to say, Arizona’s not going to take part in this in any way, shape, or form,” the bill’s lead sponsor, state Rep. Leo Biasiucci, said in a House Health and Human Services meeting on Feb. 3.
An earlier version of the bill, which also includes a section about protecting gene sequencing data from foreign adversaries, passed through the Arizona Legislature but was
blocked by the governor, who said the provisions on gene sequencing equipment went “overboard” and could create compliance issues.
Biasiucci decided to split the measure into two when he reintroduced the proposals this year.
He described the anti-forced organ harvesting bill as “simple—black and white.”
Kelley Currie, a human rights lawyer and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Economic and Council, joined Biasiucci during the Feb. 3 meeting.
“Arizona taxpayers should not subsidize or in any way encourage this macabre form of medical tourism that supports and subsidize repression, endangers patients, and encourages the most heinous form of abuse,” she said.
China’s hospitals offer short wait times for an organ, sometimes just days, which attracts patients from all around the world to join a waitlist due to the short organ supply. In 2019, independent China Tribunal in London
concluded after an investigation that forced organ harvesting on demand happens in China on a significant scale, and the victims are often practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that the CCP has tried to
eliminate through arrests, torture, and propaganda since 1999.
“You basically are purchasing an organ on demand,” Currie said. “You can schedule your appointment, you pay cash, and then go and have your surgery.”
Several states, including
Texas,
Utah, and
Idaho have enacted similar laws to limit health coverage in regards to organ transplants associated with China.
Taiwan in 2015
banned the selling, buying, and brokering of organs, as well as transplant tourism, due to China’s violations of organ procurement laws in its practice of forced organ harvesting and organ trafficking.
In November 2024, Taiwan’s Changhua County prosecutors announced the
first indictment under the law, charging a prominent local surgeon with sending patients to China for illegal organ transplants.
According to prosecutors, the doctor helped arrange for at least 10 Taiwanese patients to either have illegal kidney or liver transplant surgery in two Chinese cities.
