Honor Living Donors Act

Summary#

The Honor Our Living Donors Act would amend the Public Health Service Act, which already has a grant program for reimbursing organ donors’ qualifying expenses. Its stated goal is to stop the income of an organ recipient from being considered when a grant is used to reimburse a donor; it would also require annual reports on whether grant funding covers donors’ expenses.

  • A recipient of a grant under the program must not consider the organ recipient’s income when providing reimbursement to a donating individual through the grant.
  • The Secretary must report to Congress and the public by December 31 each year on whether grants covered all participating donors’ qualifying expenses in the previous fiscal year.
  • Each report must estimate how many participating donors were not fully reimbursed and how much funding would be needed to reimburse all of them fully.
  • The bill strikes a paragraph from the existing law. Its section title says this removes an expectation of payments by organ recipients, but the parent Act was not supplied, so the paragraph’s exact wording and effect could not be verified.
  • The bill is not law. It has been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce; the text gives no start date.

What it means for you#

  • Living donors in the grant program: When a grant is used to reimburse you, the grant recipient must not consider the income of the person who received your organ. The bill does not guarantee that you will receive full reimbursement.
  • Grant recipients: They would have to follow that restriction and provide information for the annual report, though the bill does not set out a process for collecting that information.
  • Organ recipients: The bill’s title for the paragraph it strikes indicates a change concerning expected payments from recipients. The precise change cannot be confirmed without the existing law.
  • Other people: The bill does not directly change organ-donation rules, create a new grant program, or set out a new application or appeal process.

Money#

The bill does not appropriate money or set a grant amount; no cost estimate is supplied.

  • The annual report must estimate the funding needed to reimburse participating donors fully. That estimate is not itself an appropriation or a requirement to provide that funding.
  • The cost of preparing the reports, and the bill’s overall public cost, are not stated. No publicly available information.

What is unclear#

  • The current wording of the Public Health Service Act’s grant rules could not be checked because the parent Act was not supplied.
  • The exact effect of striking the existing paragraph about recipient payments is therefore unclear.
  • The bill does not define “qualifying expenses” or specify how grant recipients should apply the ban on considering an organ recipient’s income.
  • It does not provide a start date, additional funding, or a process to ensure that donors receive full reimbursement.

Case for#

  • A possible argument for the bill is that a donor’s reimbursement should not depend on the organ recipient’s income.
  • Requiring public annual reports could show whether grant funding is falling short and estimate what full reimbursement would cost.
  • The bill would require information about donors who are not fully reimbursed, rather than reporting only on total grant funding.

Case against#

  • The bill requires reporting on funding shortfalls but does not provide more money or require the government to close them.
  • The income restriction concerns the organ recipient’s income; the bill does not say that every donor will receive full reimbursement.
  • Without the existing law’s text, the effect of removing the paragraph on recipient payments cannot be assessed.