Sponsors (2)
The bill establishes a fee-funded, HHS-administered transplant data and funding mechanism with public transparency and GAO oversight to improve planning and accountability, while imposing new fees and administrative complexity that could raise costs for hospitals and patients and limit traditional Congressional budget control.
Hospitals and transplant centers can use a public dashboard showing transplant counts and organ flow to improve planning, organ allocation decisions, and patient matching.
Patients on transplant waiting lists gain greater transparency about transplant activity and system performance through the public dashboard and quarterly fee reporting, helping them understand waitlist dynamics and system behavior.
Network members will be supported by an authorized registration-fee funding stream for HHS-administered transplant network activities, creating more stable funding for operations and reducing reliance on annual appropriations.
Hospitals and transplant network members will face per-candidate registration fees that raise their operating costs, which may be passed on to patients or insurers through higher charges or reduced services.
Using collected fees as offsetting collections reduces direct Congressional control over those funds unless distributions are explicitly appropriated, complicating budget transparency and oversight.
Public posting of fees by member could reveal sensitive business information or be misleading without context, potentially harming competition or reputations of transplant centers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Allows HHS to collect per-candidate registration fees from transplant network members, requires public quarterly fee reporting, adds a transplant-data dashboard consideration, and mandates a GAO review.
Authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services to collect registration fees from members of the organ transplant network for each transplant candidate placed on the national waiting list, and requires those fees to be tracked, publicly posted quarterly, and treated as offsetting collections to HHS accounts to be spent only as appropriated. It also requires the Network to consider creating a frequently updated dashboard of transplant data and directs the Government Accountability Office to review fee collection and report to Congress within two years.
Introduced September 10, 2025 by Jim Costa · Last progress September 10, 2025