Sponsors (3)
The bill aims to increase living-kidney donations and long-term savings by funding facilitator training at transplant hospitals, improving transplant access for many ESRD patients while increasing short-term Medicare spending and potentially concentrating services at larger centers with some implementation and beneficiary-protection risks.
Medicare beneficiaries with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) gain trained facilitators who help identify living kidney donors, increasing patients' chances of receiving transplants and reducing reliance on dialysis.
Increased living-donor transplants for Medicare beneficiaries could reduce long-term Medicare spending by replacing costly dialysis with transplant care, benefiting patients and taxpayers over time.
Hospitals that run facilitator training programs receive annual payments to cover reasonable costs, lowering financial barriers for hospitals to operate the program and encouraging participation.
The demonstration increases Medicare outlays through payments to hospitals and program costs, which could raise federal spending funded by taxpayers, especially in the short term.
Limiting eligibility to hospitals that perform kidney transplants may exclude smaller or community hospitals and concentrate services at larger centers, reducing local access—particularly for rural communities.
Program success and the promised increases in donors, transplants, and cost savings depend on implementation details and are uncertain until the demonstration is evaluated.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Creates an 8‑year Medicare demonstration that pays transplant hospitals to run training programs for living kidney donor facilitators and reimburses their reasonable program costs.
Creates an 8-year Medicare demonstration that pays hospitals that do kidney transplants to run training programs for living kidney donor facilitators. The program must be established within 180 days and will reimburse each participating eligible hospital annually for the hospital’s reasonable costs to operate such a training program. The training must prepare facilitators to help Medicare Part A and B beneficiaries with end-stage renal disease identify prospective living kidney donors and to help prospective living donors navigate the donation process. The Secretary may waive Social Security Act provisions needed to run the demonstration and must report outcome and cost data to congressional committees after five years and in two subsequent annual updates.
Introduced February 13, 2026 by Nicole Malliotakis · Last progress February 13, 2026