Sponsors (22)
The bill significantly expands non‑discrimination, decision‑support, and coverage protections for people with disabilities seeking transplants—improving equity and clarity—while imposing new costs, administrative burdens, and potential capacity and legal challenges for providers, payers, and multi‑state operations.
People with disabilities (and patients with chronic conditions) gain explicit nondiscrimination protections in transplant evaluation, listing, and care and access to reasonable modifications, auxiliary aids, and supported decision‑making so they can participate in transplant decisions.
Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and other transplant candidates get clearer, more consistent coverage and related-services rules across all stages of transplant care (evaluation, listing, surgery, post‑transplant), reducing uncertainty about benefits and speeding access to needed pre/post-transplant services.
Transplant decisions must be based on individualized medical evaluations (not disability stereotypes), helping ensure clinical decisions focus on medical suitability while preserving physician discretion to deny medically inappropriate transplants.
Hospitals, transplant programs, insurers, and taxpayers may face increased administrative and compliance costs to provide reasonable modifications, supported-decision processes, and expanded coverage obligations—costs that could be passed to patients or raise premiums and public spending.
Expanding access protections without concurrent funding or capacity increases could increase demand on transplant centers and related services, potentially lengthening wait times and straining program resources for all patients.
The Act may constrain the board's and clinicians' flexibility to issue or apply medical‑suitability guidance and will likely generate legal disputes over what counts as a "medically significant" disability, slowing decisionmaking in complex cases.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Prevents transplant providers and national transplant policy from excluding people solely for disability, requires reasonable accommodations and supported decision‑making, with a physician medical‑necessity exception.
Introduced May 15, 2025 by Ashley Brooke Moody · Last progress May 15, 2025
Prohibits transplant hospitals and the national transplant network from excluding or denying organ transplant evaluations, listings, transplants, or related services to people solely because of a disability. It requires covered providers to make reasonable modifications, provide auxiliary aids and supported decision‑making, and allows HHS Office for Civil Rights to enforce these protections, while preserving medical judgments when an individualized medical evaluation shows a disability is medically significant.