Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to discuss an issue that is very important to me and to the 1,300 Hoosiers currently in need of an organ transplant. That issue is the lack of organs for patients in need and our broken organ donation system. For more than 30 years, our Nation's organ donation system has operated in complete darkness. Groups known as organ procurement organizations, or OPOs, are responsible for getting organs from the donors to the patients who actually need them, but questions surround the effectiveness, transparency, and accountability of these organizations. OPOs are the main link between donor hospitals and organ recipients, and their performance can be a limiting factor for all stakeholders in the organ donation system. In the last 20 years, no OPO has been decertified despite serious issues of underperformance. For example, CMS recently recertified the New York City OPO despite persistent underperformance for nearly a decade. This problem exists throughout the country. Currently, OPO performance is measured by data that is self-reported, unaudited, and fraught with errors. Many of these errors have been documented by Lenny Bernstein and Kimberly Kindy at the Washington Post. That is why today I introduced legislation that would require organ procurement organizations to be held to metrics that are objective, verifiable, and not subject to self-interpretation. This way, there can be meaningful transparency, evaluation, and accountability.…”